The thrilling 11-inning contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays by one run drew a aggregate 51 million viewers across the United States, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball reported this marks the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 contest between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic contest averaged 27.33M audience members on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It additionally is the top-rated World Series matchup after the 2017 final game involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This represents a 16% improvement compared to the last Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game ranked seventh, Game 5 was 8th, and the third game finished in thirteenth position.
International Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game averaged 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English broadcast in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest started at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12 million. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – averaged over 13 million viewers, making it the most-watched World Series game on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-match World Series recorded over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen viewership growth for two consecutive seasons.
Including the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the complete US average was 16.1M. The total Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million watchers, an 8% increase over last year and the network’s strongest postseason performance since the 2017 season.
MLB stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by 44 media partners in sixteen various tongues.
