The nail-biting 11-inning matchup that saw the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays by one run averaged a aggregate 51 million spectators across the US, Canadian, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball announced this represents the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 showdown between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic game drew 27.33 million viewers on Fox networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to ratings data, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated Fall Classic game after the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a 16% improvement compared to the previous finale featuring the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked fourth, Game 4 was 7th, the fifth game came in eighth, and the third game finished in 13th position.
Global Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the game averaged 11.6M viewers 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 Japan, where the deciding game started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it drew 12M. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series MVP Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – drew 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game series averaged 15.71M viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership increases for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the total American viewership was 16.1M. The overall World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels recorded over 8 million viewers, an eight percent increase over the previous year and the network’s strongest playoff performance since 2017.
MLB reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by 44 media partners in 16 various tongues.
