The thrilling extra-inning clash where the Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays by one run attracted a total 51 million watchers in the US, Canadian, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball reported this represents the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday memorable contest secured 27.33M viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It also is the most-watched Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 final game involving the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a sixteen percent increase compared to the previous Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game placed fourth, Game 4 was 7th, Game 5 was eighth, and Game 3 landed in 13th place.
Global Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English-language broadcast in Canada after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest started at 9 p.m. local time, it drew 12 million. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – recorded over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Series Averages and Trends
The entire seven-game World Series averaged 15.71 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded viewership increases for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the total American viewership was 16.1 million. The overall World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded over 8 million watchers, an 8% increase compared to the previous year and the network’s best playoff ratings since 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by 44 media partners in sixteen various languages.
