The nail-biting 11-inning clash that saw the Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a combined over 50 million viewers in the United States, Canada, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball reported this is the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest drew over 27 million viewers on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated Fall Classic game since the 2017 Game 7 between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07M. This represents a 16% improvement over the previous Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked fourth, the fourth game was seventh, the fifth game was eighth, and the third game finished in 13th position.
International Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English broadcast in the country after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game began at 9 p.m. local time, it attracted 12 million. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – drew over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Overall Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-game series averaged over 15.7 million audience members on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the first time after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership growth for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the total American viewership reached 16.1 million. The overall World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged over 8 million viewers, an 8% rise over the previous year and the network’s strongest playoff ratings after 2017.
MLB announced that the World Series was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by 44 media partners in 16 various tongues.
