The nail-biting 11-inning contest where the Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a aggregate 51 million viewers across the US, Canada, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball reported this is the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic game averaged 27.33M viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It additionally is the most-watched World Series game after the 2017 final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the last Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed 4th, Game 4 was 7th, Game 5 came in eighth, and the third game finished in 13th place.
International Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game averaged over 11 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English program in the country after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest began at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – recorded over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Overall Averages and Trends
The full seven-game World Series recorded 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership increases for two straight seasons.
Counting the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the complete US viewership was 16.1M. The overall World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels recorded over 8 million viewers, an eight percent rise compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest playoff ratings after 2017.
MLB reported that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen different tongues.
