The thrilling 11-inning matchup that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays by one run attracted a aggregate 51 million watchers across the US, Canada, and Japan markets. MLB reported this marks the most-watched World Series Game 7 after the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
The Saturday epic game drew over 27 million audience members on Fox networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It additionally is the most-watched World Series game after the 2017 Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent increase compared to the previous Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed 4th, Game 4 ranked seventh, the fifth game was eighth, and Game 3 finished in 13th position.
International Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English-language program in the country since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest started at 9 PM local time, it drew 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – recorded 13.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Series Averages and Trends
The entire seven-match series recorded 15.71 million viewers on the Fox network, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen audience increases for two consecutive years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the complete US viewership reached over 16 million. The overall Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09M viewers, an 8% rise over the previous year and Fox’s strongest postseason ratings since 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was televised in 203 countries and territories by 44 media partners in 16 different tongues.
