The thrilling extended contest that saw the Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a combined 51M viewers across the US, Canadian, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball reported this represents the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 showdown featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic game secured 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It also stands as the most-watched Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a sixteen percent increase over the last Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed 4th, Game 4 was 7th, Game 5 was 8th, and the third game finished in thirteenth place.
International Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game drew over 11 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English-language program in the country since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – averaged 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in Japan.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-match World Series drew 15.71 million viewers on Fox, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the first time after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded audience growth for two straight years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American average was 16.1M. The overall Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09M watchers, an 8% increase over the previous year and the network’s best postseason performance since 2017.
MLB reported that the World Series was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by 44 media partners in 16 various tongues.
