The nail-biting extra-inning contest where the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays by one run attracted a total 51M viewers in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball stated this represents the most-watched World Series Game 7 since the 1991 edition contest between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic game drew 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and their digital services. 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 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a 16% improvement over the last finale between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 was eighth, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth place.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game drew 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English program in Canada since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game started at 9 PM local time, it drew 12 million viewers. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series MVP Yamamoto allowed a single run in six frames – averaged 13.1M spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Overall Averages and Trends
The entire seven-game World Series drew 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded audience increases for two consecutive seasons.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total American average reached over 16 million. The overall World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09M watchers, an eight percent increase compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason ratings after 2017.
MLB announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in 16 different languages.
