The nail-biting 11-inning clash that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run drew a aggregate over 50 million viewers across the United States, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball stated this represents the highest-rated World Series Game 7 after the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Details
The Saturday epic contest secured 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It also is the most-watched Fall Classic game since the 2017 final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent increase over the previous Game 7 between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed 4th, the fourth game ranked 7th, the fifth game was 8th, and the third game finished in 13th place.
International Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the climactic game drew over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English-language broadcast in the country since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed one run in six frames – drew 13.1M spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Overall Averages and Patterns
The full seven-game series recorded 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience increases for two straight seasons.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the total US average was 16.1M. The total Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1M in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09 million watchers, an eight percent rise over last year and the network’s best playoff performance since 2017.
MLB stated that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in 16 various languages.
