The nail-biting 11-inning contest that saw the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate 51 million spectators in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball reported this is the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 edition contest between the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s memorable game drew 27.33 million audience members on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and their digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It also is the most-watched Fall Classic game since the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement over the previous finale featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game placed 4th, Game 4 was seventh, Game 5 was 8th, and the third game landed in thirteenth place.
International Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the game drew over 11 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English broadcast in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – averaged 13.1M viewers, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Series Totals and Trends
The full seven-game series averaged 15.71 million audience members on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded audience increases for two consecutive years.
Including the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the complete US average was 16.1 million. The total 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 8.09M watchers, an eight percent rise over the previous year and Fox’s best postseason performance since the 2017 season.
MLB reported that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 various languages.
