The thrilling extended contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays by one run averaged a combined 51 million viewers across the United States, Canada, and Japanese territories. MLB announced this represents the highest-rated World Series Game 7 after the 1991 showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest averaged 27.33M viewers on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated Fall Classic game since the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a 16% increase over the previous Game 7 between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked 4th, the fourth game was seventh, the fifth game came in eighth, and Game 3 landed in 13th position.
Global Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the game averaged 11.6M watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English-language broadcast in Canada since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game started at 9 p.m. local time, it attracted 12 million. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – drew 13.1M spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a single network in Japan.
Overall Averages and Patterns
The full seven-match World Series drew over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen viewership increases for two straight years.
Including the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the complete American viewership was 16.1 million. The total Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09M viewers, an 8% increase over the previous year and the network’s best postseason performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball announced that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in sixteen different tongues.
