The nail-biting extended matchup that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays by one run attracted a total 51M spectators across the United States, Canada, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball announced this is the highest-rated World Series Game 7 after the 1991 edition showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest averaged over 27 million viewers on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. According to ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It also is the top-rated World Series game after the 2017 final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a 16% increase compared to the previous Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked fourth, the fourth game was 7th, Game 5 came in 8th, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth place.
Global Audience Numbers
In Canada, the climactic game averaged 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English broadcast in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest began at 9 p.m. local time, it drew 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed one run in six frames – averaged 13.1M spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-match series drew over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience growth for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the complete American viewership reached over 16 million. The total Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels averaged over 8 million watchers, an 8% rise over last year and the network’s strongest playoff performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in 16 different languages.
