The thrilling extended matchup where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a total 51 million viewers across the United States, Canada, and Japan territories. MLB announced this is the highest-rated World Series Game 7 since the 1991 showdown between the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s memorable game drew over 27 million viewers on Fox networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated World Series matchup since the 2017 Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07M. This marks a sixteen percent improvement over the previous finale between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 came in eighth, and Game 3 landed in 13th place.
International Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game averaged 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English broadcast in Canada after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12M. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series MVP Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – averaged 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Overall Totals and Trends
The full seven-match series averaged over 15.7 million audience members on Fox, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen viewership growth for two straight years.
Counting the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the total American viewership was 16.1M. The total World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09M watchers, an eight percent rise over last year and Fox’s best playoff performance after 2017.
MLB stated that the World Series was televised in over 200 nations and regions by 44 media partners in sixteen different languages.
