World Series Game 7 Captures 51M Audience Members Across the United States, Canada and Japanese Markets.
The nail-biting extra-inning contest where the Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a total 51M viewers across the US, Canada, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball announced this represents the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
The Saturday memorable game drew 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and their digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 edition final game between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent improvement compared to the last Game 7 between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 came in 8th, and the third game finished in thirteenth position.
Global Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the game drew over 11 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English program in Canada after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game started at 9 p.m. local time, it attracted 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – recorded 13.1 million spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in Japan.
Overall Averages and Trends
The full seven-game series drew over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership increases for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the total US viewership reached over 16 million. The total World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09M watchers, an 8% increase over the previous year and Fox’s strongest playoff ratings since the 2017 season.
MLB reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen different languages.
