The thrilling 11-inning contest where the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a total 51M watchers in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese markets. MLB stated this represents the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 edition showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Details
The Saturday epic contest drew 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It also stands as the most-watched World Series game after the 2017 edition final game between the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a sixteen percent increase over the previous Game 7 between the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked fourth, the fourth game was seventh, the fifth game was 8th, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth place.
Global Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged over 11 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English-language program in the country since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million viewers. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – recorded 13.1 million spectators, making it the most-watched World Series game on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Trends
The entire seven-match series averaged over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen audience increases for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the complete US viewership reached 16.1M. The total World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09M watchers, an 8% rise over the previous year and Fox’s best postseason performance since the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the World Series was televised in 203 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in 16 different languages.
