The nail-biting 11-inning matchup that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run drew a aggregate 51M viewers in the US, Canadian, and Japanese markets. MLB announced this represents the most-watched World Series Game 7 since the 1991 contest between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday memorable contest drew 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and their digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It additionally is the top-rated World Series matchup since the 2017 Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This represents a 16% increase over the last finale between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked fourth, the fourth game was 7th, Game 5 came in 8th, and Game 3 landed in 13th position.
Global Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game drew 11.6 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English program in the country since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – averaged 13.1 million spectators, making it the most-watched World Series game on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Series Totals and Trends
The full seven-game series averaged 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen viewership growth for two consecutive years.
Including the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the total American viewership reached over 16 million. The overall World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09M viewers, an eight percent rise over the previous year and Fox’s best postseason ratings after 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was televised in 203 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 various tongues.
