The exciting extra-inning matchup where the Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays by one run attracted a combined 51 million viewers in the US, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball announced this marks the most-watched World Series Game 7 since the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest drew 27.33M viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It also is the most-watched World Series matchup after the 2017 Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement compared to the previous Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked fourth, the fourth game ranked 7th, Game 5 came in 8th, and the third game finished in thirteenth position.
International Audience Figures
In Canada, the game recorded over 11 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English program in the country after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12M. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – averaged 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Trends
The full seven-match World Series drew 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded audience growth for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the total US viewership was over 16 million. The overall Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09 million viewers, an 8% rise over last year and Fox’s strongest playoff ratings after the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in 16 various languages.
