The nail-biting extra-inning contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run averaged a total over 50 million viewers in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball reported this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday memorable contest averaged over 27 million viewers on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It also is the top-rated World Series matchup after the 2017 edition final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a 16% improvement over the previous Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed 4th, the fourth game was 7th, the fifth game was eighth, and the third game finished in thirteenth place.
International Viewership Figures
In Canada, the climactic game recorded over 11 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English-language program in Canada since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game began at 9 p.m. local time, it attracted 12M. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – drew 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-match series drew 15.71M audience members on the Fox network, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership growth for two straight seasons.
Including the opening game telecast on Univision, the complete American viewership reached 16.1M. The total World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09M watchers, an 8% rise over the previous year and the network’s best playoff performance after the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen various tongues.
