The nail-biting 11-inning contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays by one run averaged a total over 50 million watchers across the United States, Canadian, and Japan markets. MLB stated this marks the most-watched World Series Game 7 since the 1991 showdown between the Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Details
The Saturday epic contest drew 27.33M viewers on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated World Series game since the 2017 edition final game involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07M. This marks a sixteen percent increase over the previous finale featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game was 7th, the fifth game was 8th, and Game 3 finished in 13th position.
Global Audience Figures
In Canada, the climactic game averaged over 11 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English program in the country since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six frames – averaged over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in Japan.
Overall Totals and Trends
The full seven-game World Series drew 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a two percent rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the first time after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen audience growth for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the total American viewership was 16.1 million. The total World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09M watchers, an eight percent rise compared to the previous year and the network’s best playoff performance after 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in 16 various languages.
