The nail-biting 11-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays by one run attracted a total 51 million spectators in the US, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball stated this is the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 showdown featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic game averaged over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It also is the top-rated Fall Classic game since the 2017 final game involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a 16% improvement over the previous Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed 4th, Game 4 was 7th, Game 5 was 8th, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth place.
Global Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the game recorded over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English-language broadcast in the country after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it drew 12 million. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – averaged 13.1 million spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in Japan.
Series Averages and Trends
The entire seven-game series drew 15.71M audience members on Fox, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen audience growth for two straight years.
Counting the opening game broadcast on Univision, the total American viewership reached 16.1 million. The overall Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09 million viewers, an eight percent rise compared to last year and the network’s best playoff performance after 2017.
MLB reported that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 countries and territories by 44 media partners in sixteen different tongues.
