The nail-biting extended contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays by one run attracted a total 51M spectators in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball announced this represents the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s memorable game secured 27.33 million viewers on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It also stands as the top-rated World Series game after the 2017 Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent increase over the previous Game 7 between the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed fourth, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 came in eighth, and Game 3 finished in 13th place.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded over 11 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English program in the country since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game started at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – averaged 13.1M spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a single network in Japan.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The full seven-match World Series averaged 15.71M viewers on Fox, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership growth for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the complete US average was over 16 million. The total World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09 million viewers, an eight percent increase compared to the previous year and Fox’s best postseason performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was televised in 203 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen various languages.
