The nail-biting 11-inning matchup that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a combined 51M viewers in the US, Canadian, and Japan markets. MLB reported this marks the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 showdown featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Details
The Saturday memorable contest drew over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It also is the most-watched World Series game since the 2017 Game 7 between the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a 16% improvement over the last Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked fourth, Game 4 ranked seventh, the fifth game was eighth, and the third game landed in thirteenth position.
International Audience Figures
In Canada, the climactic game drew over 11 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English broadcast in Canada since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – recorded 13.1 million spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The full seven-game World Series recorded 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the first time since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen audience increases for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the total US average was 16.1M. The overall World Series average in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels recorded over 8 million viewers, an 8% increase compared to last year and the network’s strongest playoff performance since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in sixteen different languages.
