The nail-biting extended contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays by one run drew a aggregate 51 million viewers across the United States, Canadian, and Japan markets. MLB reported this represents the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest drew over 27 million viewers on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew over 29 million. This marks a 16% improvement over the previous Game 7 between the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked fourth, the fourth game ranked 7th, Game 5 was eighth, and Game 3 landed in 13th place.
International Audience Figures
In Canada, the climactic game recorded 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English broadcast in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yamamoto allowed one run in six frames – recorded over 13 million viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a single network in Japan.
Overall Totals and Trends
The full seven-match series averaged 15.71 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen audience growth for two straight years.
Including the opening game broadcast on Univision, the total US average was 16.1 million. The total World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09 million viewers, an 8% rise over last year and the network’s strongest postseason performance after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was televised in 203 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen different tongues.
