The exciting extra-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a total over 50 million viewers in the United States, Canada, and Japanese markets. MLB announced this is the highest-rated World Series Game 7 since the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Details
Last Saturday’s epic contest averaged over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It additionally is the top-rated Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 final game between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This represents a 16% improvement over the previous Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked fourth, Game 4 was seventh, Game 5 came in 8th, and the third game finished in 13th place.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the game drew 11.6 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English program in Canada since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game started at 9 p.m. local time, it attracted 12 million. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six frames – recorded 13.1M spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-match series recorded over 15.7 million audience members on Fox, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the first time after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded viewership increases for two straight years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the total US viewership was over 16 million. The overall World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels drew 8.09 million viewers, an eight percent rise compared to last year and Fox’s best postseason performance after 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen different languages.
