The nail-biting 11-inning contest that saw the Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate 51 million viewers across the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball announced this is the highest-rated World Series Game 7 after the 1991 contest between the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Details
The Saturday memorable game secured 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It also is the top-rated Fall Classic game since the 2017 Game 7 between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew over 29 million. This marks a 16% increase over the previous Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed fourth, Game 4 ranked 7th, Game 5 was 8th, and the third game landed in thirteenth position.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded over 11 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English broadcast in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it drew 12M. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – drew over 13 million spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Trends
The full seven-game World Series averaged over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the first time since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded audience growth for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American viewership was 16.1M. The overall World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09M viewers, an eight percent rise over last year and the network’s best postseason performance after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in 16 various languages.
