The nail-biting extra-inning matchup that saw the Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run attracted a total 51 million watchers across the US, Canada, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball announced this is the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 contest between the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s memorable contest averaged 27.33 million audience members on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 final game involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement over the previous Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed 4th, the fourth game ranked seventh, the fifth game was eighth, and the third game finished in thirteenth position.
Global Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged over 11 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English-language broadcast in Canada since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12M. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – averaged 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game World Series averaged 15.71 million viewers on Fox, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership increases for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the total American average reached over 16 million. The total World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09M viewers, an eight percent rise compared to last year and Fox’s strongest postseason ratings since 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen different languages.
