The thrilling 11-inning clash where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run drew a total over 50 million viewers in the US, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball reported this marks the most-watched World Series Game 7 since the 1991 edition contest between the Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Details
Last Saturday’s epic contest secured over 27 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It also is the top-rated World Series matchup after the 2017 Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07M. This marks a sixteen percent increase compared to the previous Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game was seventh, the fifth game was 8th, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth position.
Global Audience Numbers
In Canada, the game drew 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English program in the country since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game started at 9 PM local time, it attracted 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – averaged 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-match World Series averaged over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded viewership increases for two consecutive seasons.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the total American viewership was over 16 million. The overall World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09 million viewers, an 8% increase over the previous year and the network’s best postseason ratings since the 2017 season.
MLB reported that the World Series was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in sixteen different tongues.
