The exciting extended matchup that saw the Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays by one run attracted a combined 51M watchers across the US, Canada, and Japanese territories. MLB announced this marks the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 edition showdown featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Details
The Saturday memorable contest drew 27.33 million audience members on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It additionally is the most-watched World Series game after the 2017 final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the previous finale between the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked 4th, the fourth game was 7th, Game 5 was 8th, and Game 3 finished in 13th position.
International Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the game averaged 11.6 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English-language broadcast in the country since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest began at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12M. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six frames – recorded 13.1M spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in Japan.
Overall Totals and Trends
The full seven-game World Series recorded over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the first time since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded audience increases for two consecutive years.
Including the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the total US viewership was 16.1M. The overall World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09M viewers, an eight percent increase compared to last year and Fox’s strongest postseason ratings after the 2017 season.
MLB stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen different languages.
