The nail-biting extended contest where the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a total over 50 million watchers across the United States, Canada, and Japan territories. MLB reported this marks the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest secured 27.33M viewers on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It also stands as the top-rated World Series matchup after the 2017 final game between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew over 29 million. This represents a 16% improvement compared to the previous Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked fourth, the fourth game was seventh, the fifth game came in 8th, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth position.
Global Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the game drew over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English program in the country after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it drew 12 million viewers. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – drew over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-match World Series averaged 15.71 million audience members on Fox, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen audience increases for two straight years.
Including the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the total American viewership was 16.1 million. The total World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels drew 8.09M watchers, an eight percent increase compared to last year and the network’s strongest playoff ratings since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by 44 media partners in 16 different languages.
