The nail-biting extra-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays by one run attracted a aggregate over 50 million spectators in the US, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball stated this represents the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
Last Saturday’s memorable game secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox networks, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It also stands as the top-rated Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent increase compared to the last Game 7 between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game came in eighth, and Game 3 finished in 13th place.
International Viewership Figures
In Canada, the game averaged 11.6 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English-language broadcast in the country since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest started at 9 PM local time, it attracted 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – averaged over 13 million viewers, making it the most-watched World Series game on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Series Averages and Trends
The full seven-game series drew 15.71 million audience members on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded audience growth for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the complete American viewership was 16.1 million. The total Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew over 8 million viewers, an 8% increase compared to the previous year and Fox’s best postseason performance since the 2017 season.
MLB stated that the World Series was televised in 203 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen different languages.
