The thrilling extra-inning contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a aggregate over 50 million watchers in the US, Canada, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball reported this represents the highest-rated World Series Game 7 after the 1991 contest between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
The Saturday memorable game secured 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It also stands as the most-watched Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a 16% increase over the previous Game 7 between the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game was 7th, the fifth game came in 8th, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth place.
Global Audience Numbers
In Canada, the game averaged 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English-language broadcast in the country after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – recorded 13.1 million spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-match World Series drew 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded viewership increases for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete US average reached 16.1M. The total World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels drew 8.09 million watchers, an eight percent rise compared to last year and Fox’s best playoff performance after the 2017 season.
MLB reported that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by 44 media partners in 16 various languages.
