The nail-biting 11-inning matchup that saw the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run averaged a aggregate 51 million viewers in the US, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball stated this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 showdown between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
The Saturday memorable contest drew over 27 million viewers on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It additionally is the most-watched World Series matchup after the 2017 Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew over 29 million. This marks a sixteen percent increase over the last finale between the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked 4th, Game 4 was 7th, Game 5 was 8th, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth place.
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded 11.6M viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English-language broadcast in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game started at 9 p.m. local time, it attracted 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six frames – averaged 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
The full seven-game series averaged 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience increases for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American viewership reached over 16 million. The overall Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million watchers, an 8% increase over the previous year and the network’s best postseason ratings since the 2017 season.
MLB stated that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by 44 media partners in 16 various languages.
Eva de Vries is a passionate book lover and local writer from Eindhoven.
