The exciting 11-inning contest that saw the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays by one run attracted a total 51M watchers across the United States, Canadian, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball announced this represents the highest-rated World Series Game 7 since the 1991 edition contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Details
The Saturday memorable game averaged over 27 million audience members on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and their digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It also is the most-watched World Series game after the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew over 29 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement over the previous Game 7 between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game placed fourth, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game was 8th, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth position.
International Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game drew 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English broadcast in Canada after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest began at 9 p.m. local time, it attracted 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – recorded over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Trends
The full seven-match series drew over 15.7 million audience members on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen audience growth for two straight seasons.
Counting the opening game telecast on Univision, the complete American viewership reached over 16 million. The overall Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09M viewers, an eight percent rise over last year and Fox’s best playoff ratings after 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in sixteen different languages.
