The nail-biting extended clash where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a total 51 million watchers in the United States, Canada, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball announced this represents the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest secured over 27 million viewers on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and their digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It also is the top-rated Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 edition final game involving the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement compared to the last Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked fourth, Game 4 ranked 7th, the fifth game was eighth, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth position.
International Audience Figures
In Canada, the game recorded 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English broadcast in Canada after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game began at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12M. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – drew 13.1M spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Trends
The entire seven-match World Series drew 15.71 million audience members on the Fox network, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership increases for two straight years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete US average was 16.1M. The overall Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09M watchers, an 8% increase compared to last year and Fox’s strongest postseason ratings after the 2017 season.
MLB reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by 44 media partners in 16 different tongues.
