The exciting extra-inning matchup where the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays by one run drew a total 51M watchers in the US, Canada, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball stated this marks the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 showdown between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic contest drew 27.33 million audience members on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It additionally is the top-rated Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This represents a 16% increase compared to the previous Game 7 between the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked fourth, the fourth game ranked 7th, Game 5 came in eighth, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth position.
International Audience Numbers
In Canada, the game averaged 11.6M viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English broadcast in the country since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest started at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12 million viewers. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series MVP Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – averaged over 13 million spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Series Averages and Trends
The entire seven-match series averaged 15.71 million audience members on Fox, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded audience growth for two straight seasons.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the total American viewership was over 16 million. The total World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged over 8 million watchers, an 8% rise compared to last year and Fox’s strongest playoff performance after the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in 16 different languages.
