The nail-biting extra-inning clash that saw the Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays by one run attracted a total 51 million viewers across the United States, Canada, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball announced this is the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 edition showdown featuring the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
The Saturday memorable contest secured 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and their digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It also stands as the top-rated World Series game after the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement compared to the last Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 was 7th, the fifth game came in 8th, and Game 3 finished in 13th place.
International Viewership Figures
In Canada, the game averaged 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English-language broadcast in Canada since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it drew 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – recorded 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Trends
The entire seven-game series averaged 15.71M viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience increases for two straight seasons.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total American viewership reached over 16 million. The overall Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09M watchers, an 8% rise over last year and Fox’s best postseason performance after the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen different languages.
