The nail-biting extended contest where the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a total 51M watchers in the US, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball stated this marks the highest-rated World Series Game 7 since the 1991 edition contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Details
Last Saturday’s epic game drew 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It also stands as the most-watched World Series matchup after the 2017 edition final game between the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement over the last finale between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game placed fourth, Game 4 was 7th, Game 5 came in eighth, and the third game landed in thirteenth position.
Global Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game averaged 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English program in the country after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game started at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12 million viewers. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – averaged 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Overall Totals 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 after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen viewership increases for two straight years.
Including the opening game telecast on Univision, the complete American viewership was 16.1M. The total World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million watchers, an 8% rise over last year and Fox’s best playoff performance after 2017.
MLB announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen various languages.
