The nail-biting 11-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run averaged a aggregate over 50 million spectators across the US, Canada, and Japanese territories. MLB announced this is the most-watched World Series Game 7 since the 1991 edition contest featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday memorable contest secured 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched World Series matchup after the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the last finale between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game placed fourth, the fourth game was seventh, the fifth game was 8th, and the third game finished in thirteenth position.
Global Audience Numbers
In Canada, the game averaged over 11 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English program in Canada since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – averaged 13.1M viewers, making it the most-watched World Series game on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Patterns
The full seven-match series averaged over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded audience growth for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total US viewership reached 16.1 million. The overall World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09M watchers, an 8% increase compared to last year and Fox’s strongest postseason performance since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was televised in 203 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in 16 different tongues.
