The nail-biting extra-inning matchup that saw the Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays by one run attracted a total 51M viewers in the US, Canadian, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball reported this represents the most-watched World Series Game 7 after the 1991 contest between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday memorable contest averaged over 27 million viewers on Fox networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It also is the top-rated World Series game since the 2017 Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Astros, which drew over 29 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement over the last Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed fourth, Game 4 ranked 7th, Game 5 came in 8th, and the third game landed in 13th position.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the game drew 11.6M viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English-language program in Canada since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game started at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12M. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – recorded 13.1M viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Trends
The entire seven-game series drew 15.71 million viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the first time after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen viewership growth for two consecutive seasons.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete US average was 16.1M. The total World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09 million watchers, an eight percent increase compared to last year and the network’s strongest playoff performance after 2017.
MLB stated that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in 16 various tongues.
