The nail-biting 11-inning clash that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a combined 51M spectators across the US, Canadian, and Japan territories. MLB reported this marks the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Details
The Saturday memorable contest drew 27.33M audience members on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally is the top-rated World Series matchup after the 2017 Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07M. This represents a 16% improvement over the previous Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked 4th, the fourth game ranked seventh, Game 5 came in eighth, and Game 3 landed in 13th place.
Global Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game drew 11.6M watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English-language broadcast in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest began at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – recorded over 13 million spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Overall Averages and Trends
The full seven-game World Series drew 15.71M audience members on the Fox network, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen audience growth for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the complete US average was 16.1 million. The overall Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09M watchers, an 8% increase compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest playoff performance since 2017.
MLB announced that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 different languages.
