The exciting extra-inning matchup that saw the Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate over 50 million watchers in the US, Canada, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball stated this marks the most-watched World Series Game 7 since the 1991 showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday memorable game secured 27.33 million viewers on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and their digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It also is the top-rated Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew over 29 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, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game was seventh, the fifth game came in eighth, and Game 3 landed in 13th position.
Global Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged over 11 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English-language broadcast in the country after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – averaged 13.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game series drew 15.71 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience growth for two straight seasons.
Counting the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the complete US viewership reached over 16 million. The overall World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels drew 8.09M watchers, an 8% rise compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason ratings since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball stated that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen various languages.
