The nail-biting extra-inning clash that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a total over 50 million watchers in the US, Canadian, and Japan territories. MLB reported this represents the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 contest between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest averaged 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated World Series matchup since the 2017 edition final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent increase over the last finale featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed fourth, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 was 8th, and the third game landed in 13th position.
Global Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game drew 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English program in Canada since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game started at 9 p.m. local time, it attracted 12 million. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – drew 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in Japan.
Overall Averages and Trends
The full seven-game World Series recorded over 15.7 million audience members 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 seen audience growth for two consecutive years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American average was over 16 million. The total World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09M viewers, an eight percent rise over the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason ratings since 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was televised in 203 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen different tongues.
