The nail-biting extra-inning matchup where the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a aggregate over 50 million viewers across the United States, Canada, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball reported this is the most-watched World Series Game 7 since the 1991 showdown featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic game drew over 27 million viewers on Fox networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched Fall Classic game since the 2017 edition final game between the Dodgers and Astros, which drew over 29 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement compared to the previous finale between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed 4th, the fourth game ranked 7th, Game 5 came in 8th, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth position.
Global Audience Figures
In Canada, the climactic game drew 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English broadcast in Canada since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it drew 12 million viewers. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto allowed one run in six frames – averaged 13.1M viewers, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game series recorded 15.71 million viewers on Fox, a two percent rise from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen viewership growth for two straight seasons.
Counting the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American viewership was over 16 million. The total Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels recorded over 8 million watchers, an 8% rise over last year and the network’s strongest postseason performance after the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the World Series was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen different languages.
