The thrilling extra-inning contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run averaged a aggregate 51M viewers in the United States, Canada, and Japanese markets. MLB stated this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 showdown between the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic game drew 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It also is the most-watched Fall Classic game since the 2017 edition final game between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07M. This represents a 16% increase compared to the last finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 was 8th, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth place.
International Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English-language broadcast in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it drew 12 million. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – averaged 13.1M spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Trends
The full seven-game World Series drew 15.71 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen audience increases for two consecutive seasons.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the complete American average reached over 16 million. The overall World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million watchers, an 8% rise over the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason ratings since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball announced that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 nations and regions by 44 media partners in 16 various tongues.
