The exciting extended contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a total 51 million viewers in the US, Canada, and Japanese territories. MLB reported this represents the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic contest secured 27.33 million viewers on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated Fall Classic game after the 2017 Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a sixteen percent increase over the last finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed 4th, Game 4 ranked seventh, Game 5 was eighth, and the third game landed in 13th place.
Global Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game recorded 11.6M watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English broadcast in the country after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game started at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six frames – drew 13.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Overall Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-match series drew over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded viewership increases for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the total US viewership was over 16 million. The total World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew over 8 million viewers, an 8% rise compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason performance after the 2017 season.
MLB reported that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in 16 different languages.
