The nail-biting 11-inning clash that saw the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a combined 51 million viewers across the US, Canadian, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball announced this is the most-watched World Series Game 7 after the 1991 edition contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
Last Saturday’s memorable contest drew 27.33M audience members on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It also stands as the top-rated Fall Classic game since the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07M. This marks a sixteen percent improvement over the previous Game 7 between the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked 4th, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 was 8th, and the third game finished in 13th position.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the game drew 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English-language program in the country after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest started at 9 PM local time, it attracted 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – recorded over 13 million spectators, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Overall Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game World Series averaged 15.71 million viewers on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen audience growth for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the complete American viewership was 16.1M. 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 over 8 million watchers, an eight percent rise over the previous year and Fox’s strongest playoff performance after 2017.
MLB announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by 44 media partners in 16 different languages.
