The nail-biting extended clash that saw the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run drew a aggregate over 50 million watchers across the United States, Canada, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball reported this represents the highest-rated World Series Game 7 since the 1991 edition showdown featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic contest averaged 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It also is the most-watched World Series game since the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This marks a sixteen percent improvement over the previous Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and 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 8th, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth position.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the game averaged 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English broadcast in the country since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – recorded 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a single network in Japan.
Overall Averages and Trends
The full seven-match series drew 15.71M audience members on the Fox network, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen audience growth for two straight seasons.
Including the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the total American average was over 16 million. The total Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million viewers, an 8% increase compared to the previous year and Fox’s strongest playoff performance since 2017.
MLB announced that the World Series was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 different tongues.
