The nail-biting 11-inning contest that saw the Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays by one run drew a total 51M spectators in the United States, Canada, and Japanese territories. MLB stated this marks the most-watched World Series Game 7 after the 1991 contest between the Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic game drew over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It also is the top-rated Fall Classic game after the 2017 edition final game involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a 16% improvement over the last finale featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game placed 4th, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game came in eighth, and Game 3 landed in 13th place.
International Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game averaged 11.6 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English-language program in the country after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game started at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12M. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series MVP Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – drew 13.1 million spectators, making it the most-watched World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game series averaged over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen audience growth for two straight years.
Counting the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the complete US viewership was 16.1 million. The overall Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09M watchers, an 8% increase over last year and the network’s best playoff performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in 16 various tongues.
