The nail-biting extended clash where the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a total 51M viewers across the US, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball reported this represents the most-watched World Series Game 7 since the 1991 edition showdown featuring the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday memorable contest drew over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It also is the most-watched World Series matchup after the 2017 edition final game involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew over 29 million. This represents a 16% improvement compared to the last finale featuring the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked 4th, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game was eighth, and Game 3 finished in 13th place.
International Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game recorded over 11 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English broadcast in Canada since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game began at 9 p.m. local time, it drew 12 million. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto allowed one run in six frames – drew 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-match World Series recorded over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the first time since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience increases for two consecutive years.
Including the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the complete US viewership was 16.1M. The overall Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million viewers, an eight percent increase over last year and the network’s strongest postseason ratings since 2017.
MLB stated that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in 16 various tongues.
