The nail-biting extra-inning clash that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a aggregate 51 million watchers across the United States, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball stated this is the highest-rated World Series Game 7 after the 1991 showdown between the Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest secured over 27 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It also is the top-rated World Series matchup after the 2017 edition final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07M. This marks a sixteen percent improvement over the previous Game 7 between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked fourth, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 came in 8th, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth position.
Global Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the game recorded over 11 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English program in the country after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest started at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12 million. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series MVP Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – recorded over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Series Totals and Trends
The full seven-game World Series recorded 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen viewership increases for two consecutive seasons.
Including the opening game broadcast on Univision, the total American average was 16.1M. The overall World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded over 8 million watchers, an 8% increase over last year and Fox’s best postseason performance after the 2017 season.
MLB stated that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen different languages.
