The nail-biting 11-inning contest that saw the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays by one run drew a aggregate 51 million watchers across the United States, Canada, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball stated this marks the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 edition showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Details
The Saturday epic game averaged 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It also is the top-rated Fall Classic game after the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This represents a 16% improvement over the last Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked 4th, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game was 8th, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth place.
Global Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the climactic game averaged 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English-language program in the country after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – averaged over 13 million spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Overall Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-match World Series averaged over 15.7 million audience members on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience increases for two straight years.
Including the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the total US average reached over 16 million. The overall World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09 million watchers, an 8% increase over last year and Fox’s strongest postseason performance after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by 44 media partners in 16 various tongues.
