The thrilling extended contest where the Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays by one run attracted a aggregate 51 million watchers in the US, Canada, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball announced this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 edition contest between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Details
The Saturday memorable contest drew 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and their digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It also is the top-rated Fall Classic game since the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07M. This marks a sixteen percent improvement compared to the previous finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed fourth, Game 4 was 7th, Game 5 was 8th, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth position.
International Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English program in Canada after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – drew 13.1 million spectators, making it the most-watched World Series game on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-match series recorded over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen audience increases for two straight seasons.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the complete American viewership reached over 16 million. The total Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09 million watchers, an eight percent increase over the previous year and Fox’s best playoff performance after 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was televised in over 200 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen different languages.
