The nail-biting extended matchup where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays by one run drew a aggregate over 50 million spectators in the United States, Canada, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball reported this is the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 showdown featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic game secured 27.33M viewers on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and their digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It also is the top-rated World Series matchup since the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a sixteen percent increase over the last Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked fourth, the fourth game was seventh, the fifth game came in eighth, and the third game landed in thirteenth position.
Global Audience Numbers
In Canada, the game averaged 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English-language broadcast in Canada after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest started at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12 million. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – averaged over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Series Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-match series recorded 15.71 million viewers on the Fox network, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded audience growth for two straight seasons.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete US average was 16.1 million. 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 drew 8.09M viewers, an eight percent increase compared to the previous year and the network’s best postseason performance after 2017.
Major League Baseball announced that the World Series was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 different languages.
