The exciting extended matchup that saw the Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays by one run drew a combined 51M watchers across the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball reported this is the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 edition showdown featuring the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday memorable contest secured over 27 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It also stands as the top-rated World Series matchup after the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement over the last Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game ranked seventh, the fifth game came in eighth, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth position.
International Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the climactic game averaged over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English-language broadcast in the country after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – drew over 13 million spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in Japan.
Overall Totals and Trends
The full seven-game series drew 15.71M audience members on Fox, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This represents the first time since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience growth for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the complete American viewership reached 16.1 million. The total Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million watchers, an eight percent rise over the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason performance after the 2017 season.
MLB reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen various languages.
