The exciting 11-inning contest that saw the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays by one run attracted a total 51M spectators across the US, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball announced this marks the highest-rated World Series Game 7 since the 1991 edition contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
Last Saturday’s memorable game averaged 27.33 million viewers on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally is the top-rated Fall Classic game since the 2017 edition final game between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement over the last finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed 4th, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 came in 8th, and the third game landed in 13th place.
Global Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game recorded 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English-language broadcast in Canada since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest started at 9 PM local time, it drew 12 million. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed one run in six frames – recorded 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Overall Totals and Trends
The entire seven-match series drew 15.71M viewers on Fox, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience growth for two consecutive years.
Counting the opening game telecast on Univision, the complete US average was over 16 million. The overall Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09M viewers, an eight percent rise compared to last year and Fox’s best playoff performance since the 2017 season.
MLB stated that the World Series was televised in 203 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in 16 various tongues.
