The thrilling 11-inning matchup where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a aggregate 51M watchers across the US, Canadian, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball stated this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 showdown featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Details
The Saturday epic game secured over 27 million viewers on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It also stands as the most-watched World Series game after the 2017 final game involving the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07M. This marks a 16% increase compared to the last finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game was 8th, and Game 3 finished in 13th place.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the game averaged over 11 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English program in Canada since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – drew 13.1M spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The full seven-match series recorded 15.71M viewers on Fox, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded audience increases for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the complete American average was over 16 million. The overall Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels drew 8.09 million watchers, an 8% increase compared to last year and the network’s best postseason performance since the 2017 season.
MLB stated that the World Series was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in sixteen different languages.
