The thrilling 11-inning contest that saw the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run attracted a aggregate 51M watchers across the United States, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball reported this marks the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Details
The Saturday memorable game secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and their digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched World Series game after the 2017 final game involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This marks a 16% increase over the last finale featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game was 7th, Game 5 was 8th, and Game 3 landed in 13th position.
Global Audience Numbers
In Canada, the game drew 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English broadcast in Canada after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it drew 12 million viewers. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – drew 13.1M spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-game World Series drew 15.71M audience members on the Fox network, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen audience increases for two consecutive seasons.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the total American average reached 16.1M. The overall Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew over 8 million viewers, an eight percent increase compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason ratings after the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen various tongues.
