The nail-biting 11-inning contest where the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a combined 51 million watchers in the US, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball reported this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 edition contest between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest secured 27.33 million viewers on Fox networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It also stands as the top-rated Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent increase compared to the previous finale between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked 4th, the fourth game ranked 7th, the fifth game came in 8th, and the third game finished in 13th position.
International Viewership Figures
In Canada, the climactic game recorded 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English broadcast in the country after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game started at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12M. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – averaged 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-match World Series drew over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen audience increases for two straight seasons.
Counting the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the complete American average was over 16 million. The overall World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09M watchers, an 8% increase compared to last year and Fox’s best playoff performance after 2017.
Major League Baseball announced that the World Series was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 different languages.
