The exciting extra-inning clash that saw the Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate over 50 million watchers in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball stated this is the highest-rated World Series Game 7 after the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest drew over 27 million audience members on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and their digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It also is the most-watched World Series matchup after the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a 16% improvement over the last Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed fourth, Game 4 ranked seventh, Game 5 came in 8th, and Game 3 finished in 13th position.
Global Audience Figures
In Canada, the climactic game drew over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English-language broadcast in Canada after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – drew 13.1 million spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Overall Totals and Trends
The full seven-match World Series averaged over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the first time after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen audience increases for two straight seasons.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the total American viewership was 16.1 million. The total World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09 million watchers, an eight percent increase over the previous year and Fox’s strongest postseason performance after 2017.
MLB announced that the World Series was televised in over 200 nations and regions by 44 media partners in sixteen different languages.
