The exciting extended contest where the Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a total over 50 million watchers in the US, Canada, and Japan territories. MLB announced this marks the highest-rated World Series Game 7 since the 1991 edition contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday memorable contest drew 27.33 million viewers on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It also stands as the top-rated Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Dodgers and Astros, which drew over 29 million. This represents a 16% improvement compared to the last Game 7 between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed 4th, Game 4 was seventh, Game 5 came in eighth, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth position.
Global Audience Figures
In Canada, the game averaged 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English broadcast in the country after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest began at 9 PM local time, it attracted 12 million viewers. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – averaged 13.1 million spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Overall Totals and Trends
The full seven-game World Series recorded 15.71M viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership growth for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American viewership reached 16.1 million. The total World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09M watchers, an eight percent increase compared to the previous year and Fox’s strongest playoff ratings after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was televised in over 200 countries and territories by 44 media partners in sixteen different tongues.
