The nail-biting 11-inning clash where the Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a total 51 million watchers in the US, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball announced this is the most-watched World Series Game 7 after the 1991 edition contest between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic game secured 27.33M audience members on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It additionally is the most-watched World Series matchup after the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a 16% improvement compared to the previous Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed 4th, the fourth game ranked 7th, Game 5 was 8th, and the third game landed in 13th position.
International Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the game recorded 11.6 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English-language broadcast in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it attracted 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – averaged 13.1 million spectators, making it the most-watched World Series game on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Overall Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-game series recorded 15.71M audience members on Fox, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership growth for two straight seasons.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American viewership reached over 16 million. The overall Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged over 8 million viewers, an eight percent increase over last year and Fox’s best playoff performance since 2017.
MLB reported that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in 16 different languages.
