The nail-biting extended contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate 51 million viewers across the US, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball stated this marks the most-watched World Series Game 7 since the 1991 contest between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic game averaged 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It also stands as the top-rated World Series matchup after the 2017 Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a sixteen percent increase over the previous finale between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked fourth, the fourth game ranked seventh, the fifth game came in 8th, and the third game landed in thirteenth position.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the game recorded 11.6M viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English-language broadcast in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it attracted 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – averaged over 13 million spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a single network in Japan.
Overall Totals and Trends
The entire seven-match World Series recorded 15.71M audience members on the Fox network, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen audience increases for two straight years.
Counting the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the total US average was 16.1 million. The total World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged over 8 million viewers, an 8% increase over last year and Fox’s best playoff performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen different languages.
