The nail-biting extended contest where the Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a total 51M watchers across the United States, Canada, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball stated this marks the highest-rated World Series Game 7 after the 1991 edition showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday memorable contest secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It additionally is the top-rated Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 final game involving the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This marks a 16% improvement compared to the previous Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked 4th, the fourth game was seventh, the fifth game was eighth, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth place.
Global Audience Figures
In Canada, the climactic game averaged 11.6M watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English broadcast in the country after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest began at 9 p.m. local time, it drew 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – drew 13.1 million spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Series Totals and Trends
The full seven-game World Series recorded 15.71 million viewers on the Fox network, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience increases for two straight seasons.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the complete US viewership was 16.1 million. The total World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded over 8 million viewers, an eight percent rise over last year and the network’s strongest playoff ratings since the 2017 season.
MLB stated that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by 44 media partners in sixteen different tongues.
