The nail-biting extra-inning contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a combined 51M watchers in the United States, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball reported this is the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 contest between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s epic game drew over 27 million viewers on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally is the top-rated Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew over 29 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement compared to the last Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game ranked seventh, the fifth game was eighth, and the third game finished in 13th place.
Global Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the game drew 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English broadcast in Canada after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game began at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12 million viewers. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – averaged over 13 million viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Overall Averages and Trends
The entire seven-game series recorded 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded viewership growth for two consecutive years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total American viewership reached over 16 million. The total Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09 million watchers, an 8% increase over the previous year and the network’s best postseason ratings since 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in 16 different tongues.
