The thrilling extended contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a total 51 million viewers in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. MLB announced this marks the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 showdown between the Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
Last Saturday’s memorable game averaged over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It additionally is the top-rated Fall Classic game after the 2017 edition final game between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent increase compared to the previous Game 7 between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked fourth, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game came in 8th, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth position.
Global Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the climactic game recorded over 11 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English-language broadcast in Canada after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12M. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – drew 13.1 million spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Patterns
The full seven-match World Series recorded 15.71M audience members on Fox, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen audience growth for two straight seasons.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the total US viewership was 16.1 million. The overall World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09 million viewers, an 8% rise over last year and the network’s best postseason performance after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was televised in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in 16 different languages.
