The nail-biting 11-inning contest where the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a combined 51 million watchers across the United States, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball announced this is the most-watched World Series Game 7 after the 1991 edition contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic game secured 27.33M audience members on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and their digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated Fall Classic game since the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07M. This marks a 16% increase over the last finale featuring the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game ranked 7th, Game 5 came in 8th, and the third game finished in thirteenth position.
International Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English program in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game started at 9 PM local time, it drew 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – recorded over 13 million spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game World Series drew over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded audience growth for two straight years.
Including the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the total US viewership reached 16.1 million. The overall World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million viewers, an 8% rise over the previous year and Fox’s strongest playoff ratings since the 2017 season.
MLB reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in 16 different languages.
