The thrilling extra-inning contest where the Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate 51 million watchers across the US, Canada, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball stated this represents the most-watched World Series Game 7 since the 1991 edition showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic game secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This represents a 16% improvement over the last Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked 4th, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 was eighth, and Game 3 landed in 13th position.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the game averaged over 11 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English broadcast in the country after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game started at 9 p.m. local time, it attracted 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six frames – recorded over 13 million spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-match series drew 15.71 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded audience increases for two straight years.
Counting the opening game broadcast on Univision, the complete American average reached 16.1M. The total World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded over 8 million watchers, an eight percent rise over the previous year and the network’s best postseason performance after 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by 44 media partners in sixteen different tongues.
