The thrilling extended matchup that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a total 51M viewers across the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. MLB announced this is the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It also is the most-watched World Series game since the 2017 final game between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This marks a 16% increase over the last finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game was 7th, the fifth game came in eighth, and the third game landed in 13th position.
Global Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game drew over 11 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English-language program in Canada after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game began at 9 PM local time, it attracted 12 million. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – drew over 13 million spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Patterns
The full seven-match World Series drew 15.71M viewers on Fox, a two percent increase 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 consecutive seasons.
Counting the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the complete US viewership reached 16.1M. The total World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09 million viewers, an eight percent rise over the previous year and Fox’s best playoff ratings since 2017.
MLB announced that the World Series was televised in over 200 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen various languages.
