The nail-biting extended clash where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays by one run drew a combined 51M spectators in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball announced this represents the highest-rated World Series Game 7 since the 1991 edition contest featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
Last Saturday’s memorable game secured over 27 million viewers on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It additionally is the most-watched Fall Classic game after the 2017 Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement compared to the last Game 7 between the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked fourth, Game 4 ranked 7th, the fifth game was 8th, and Game 3 landed in 13th position.
International Audience Numbers
In Canada, the game drew 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English-language broadcast in Canada since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it drew 12 million. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series MVP Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – recorded over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-match World Series drew 15.71 million viewers on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience growth for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the complete American average reached 16.1 million. The total World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09 million viewers, an 8% increase over last year and Fox’s best postseason performance since the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the World Series was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by 44 media partners in sixteen different languages.
