The thrilling extra-inning contest where the Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a combined 51 million spectators across the United States, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball stated this represents the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic game averaged over 27 million audience members on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and their digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It also stands as the most-watched Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 edition final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the previous finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked 4th, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 was eighth, and Game 3 finished in 13th place.
International Viewership Figures
In Canada, the game recorded 11.6 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English program in the country after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12M. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – drew 13.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a single network in Japan.
Series Averages and Trends
The full seven-match World Series averaged over 15.7 million audience members on Fox, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen audience growth for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the total US viewership reached 16.1 million. The overall World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09M watchers, an 8% increase over the previous year and Fox’s strongest playoff ratings after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in sixteen various languages.
