The nail-biting 11-inning clash where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a total over 50 million viewers in the United States, Canada, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball stated this represents the highest-rated World Series Game 7 after the 1991 showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
The Saturday memorable game secured 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It also is the top-rated World Series matchup since the 2017 final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement over the previous finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 ranked 7th, Game 5 was 8th, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth place.
International Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the climactic game averaged 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English broadcast in Canada after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest began at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – drew 13.1M spectators, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Overall Averages and Trends
The full seven-game World Series averaged 15.71M viewers on Fox, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded audience increases for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the complete US viewership reached over 16 million. The overall Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09M watchers, an eight percent rise over last year and the network’s strongest playoff performance after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen various languages.
