The thrilling extended clash where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a aggregate 51M spectators across the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. MLB stated this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 contest between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Details
The Saturday epic game averaged 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated Fall Classic game after the 2017 Game 7 between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a 16% improvement over the previous Game 7 between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed 4th, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game came in eighth, and Game 3 finished in 13th place.
International Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the game averaged 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English-language broadcast in Canada after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest started at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12 million. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – averaged 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Patterns
The full seven-match series averaged 15.71 million viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership increases for two consecutive years.
Counting the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the total US viewership was 16.1 million. The overall World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09M viewers, an 8% increase over the previous year and Fox’s best playoff ratings after 2017.
MLB reported that the World Series was televised in 203 nations and regions by 44 media partners in sixteen different tongues.
