The nail-biting 11-inning contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays by one run attracted a total 51M watchers across the US, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball announced this marks the most-watched World Series Game 7 since the 1991 contest between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday memorable game secured over 27 million viewers on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It also is the top-rated World Series matchup since the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This marks a sixteen percent improvement over the previous finale between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed 4th, Game 4 was seventh, Game 5 came in eighth, and the third game landed in 13th position.
Global Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English-language broadcast in Canada since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game began at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12 million. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – drew 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Trends
The full seven-match World Series averaged 15.71 million viewers on Fox, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen audience increases for two straight years.
Including the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the complete US average was 16.1M. The overall World Series average in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1M in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded over 8 million viewers, an eight percent rise over the previous year and Fox’s strongest postseason performance after 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was televised in 203 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen various languages.
