The nail-biting extended contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays by one run drew a total 51M spectators across the US, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball reported this marks the most-watched World Series Game 7 after the 1991 showdown between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic game drew 27.33 million audience members on Fox networks, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. According to ratings data, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It also stands as the top-rated Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a 16% increase over the last Game 7 between the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed fourth, Game 4 was 7th, the fifth game was eighth, and the third game finished in thirteenth position.
International Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded 11.6M viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English program in the country after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest started at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – drew 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-match series drew 15.71 million viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen audience increases for two consecutive seasons.
Including the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American average was 16.1M. The total Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels recorded over 8 million watchers, an eight percent rise over the previous year and the network’s best postseason ratings since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in sixteen different tongues.
