The nail-biting extended matchup where the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a total 51M viewers across the US, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball announced this is the highest-rated World Series Game 7 after the 1991 edition showdown between the Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Details
Last Saturday’s epic game averaged 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched World Series game since the 2017 edition final game involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This represents a 16% improvement compared to the last Game 7 between the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked fourth, Game 4 was 7th, Game 5 came in 8th, and the third game finished in thirteenth place.
International Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded 11.6 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English-language broadcast in the country after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game began at 9 p.m. local time, it drew 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – averaged 13.1M viewers, making it the most-watched World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game series averaged 15.71 million audience members on Fox, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen audience increases for two consecutive years.
Including the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American average reached over 16 million. The overall Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels drew 8.09 million viewers, an eight percent increase over last year and the network’s strongest playoff performance since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball announced that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 various languages.
