The nail-biting extra-inning matchup where the Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays by one run drew a aggregate 51 million watchers across the United States, Canada, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball reported this is the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Details
The Saturday epic contest secured 27.33M viewers on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and their digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It also is the most-watched Fall Classic game after the 2017 final game involving the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07M. This marks a sixteen percent improvement compared to the last finale featuring the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game was 7th, Game 5 came in eighth, and Game 3 landed in 13th position.
Global Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded 11.6M watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English broadcast in the country since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it drew 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – averaged 13.1 million spectators, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Series Averages and Patterns
The full seven-game series recorded 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience growth for two straight seasons.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the complete US viewership was 16.1M. The total World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels drew 8.09 million viewers, an 8% increase compared to last year and the network’s strongest playoff ratings after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball announced that the World Series was televised in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen various languages.
