The nail-biting 11-inning clash where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run attracted a aggregate 51M viewers across the United States, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball stated this marks the most-watched World Series Game 7 since the 1991 showdown featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
The Saturday epic contest secured 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew over 29 million. This marks a 16% improvement compared to the previous Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked fourth, the fourth game was 7th, Game 5 came in 8th, and the third game landed in 13th place.
International Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the game drew over 11 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English program in Canada since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest started at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – averaged 13.1M viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game World Series recorded over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded audience increases for two straight seasons.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the complete US viewership reached over 16 million. The total Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1M in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09 million viewers, an eight percent increase over last year and the network’s best playoff performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 countries and territories by 44 media partners in sixteen various tongues.
