The nail-biting 11-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays by one run averaged a total over 50 million watchers in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball reported this represents the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 contest between the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic game drew over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally is the most-watched Fall Classic game since the 2017 final game involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a 16% increase over the previous finale featuring the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game was 7th, Game 5 was eighth, and the third game finished in thirteenth position.
International Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English broadcast in the country after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game started at 9 p.m. local time, it attracted 12M. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – averaged over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in the country.
Overall Averages and Patterns
The full seven-match series averaged 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This represents the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen audience growth for two straight years.
Including the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the complete American viewership was 16.1M. The overall World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09M watchers, an eight percent increase over the previous year and Fox’s strongest postseason ratings since the 2017 season.
MLB reported that the World Series was televised in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 various tongues.
