The nail-biting extra-inning matchup that saw the Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate 51 million viewers in the United States, Canada, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball announced this represents the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 edition contest between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Details
The Saturday memorable contest averaged over 27 million viewers on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew over 29 million. This represents a sixteen percent increase compared to the last Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 was 7th, Game 5 came in eighth, and Game 3 finished in 13th place.
Global Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game recorded over 11 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English-language program in Canada since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game started at 9 p.m. local time, it attracted 12 million. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – averaged over 13 million spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-game series drew 15.71 million viewers on Fox, a two percent rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen audience growth for two straight years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American viewership was 16.1M. The total World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09 million viewers, an 8% increase over last year and Fox’s best postseason ratings since 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was televised in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen different languages.
