The thrilling extra-inning clash that saw the Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays by one run drew a combined 51 million watchers across the United States, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball reported this represents the most-watched World Series Game 7 after the 1991 contest between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s memorable contest drew 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It also is the top-rated World Series game since the 2017 Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a sixteen percent increase compared to the last Game 7 between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game placed fourth, Game 4 was 7th, Game 5 was eighth, and Game 3 landed in 13th position.
International Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game drew 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English program in Canada after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – drew 13.1M spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The full seven-game series drew over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership growth for two consecutive seasons.
Including the opening game telecast on Univision, the complete American viewership reached over 16 million. The overall Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09M viewers, an eight percent rise over last year and the network’s strongest playoff performance after 2017.
MLB reported that the World Series was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in 16 different languages.
