The exciting extra-inning contest that saw the Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a total 51M watchers across the US, Canada, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball announced this is the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest averaged 27.33M viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It additionally is the top-rated World Series game after the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent increase over the previous Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked fourth, Game 4 ranked 7th, the fifth game came in 8th, and the third game finished in thirteenth position.
International Viewership Figures
In Canada, the game averaged 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English-language program in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – drew over 13 million viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a single network in Japan.
Overall Averages and Trends
The entire seven-match World Series recorded 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a two percent rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen viewership increases for two straight seasons.
Including the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the total US average reached 16.1M. The total Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged over 8 million viewers, an 8% increase over the previous year and Fox’s best postseason performance after 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in 16 various tongues.
