The thrilling 11-inning matchup where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a total 51M watchers across the United States, Canada, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball stated this is the highest-rated World Series Game 7 after the 1991 showdown featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic game drew 27.33M audience members on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched Fall Classic game since the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement over the previous Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed fourth, the fourth game was 7th, Game 5 came in eighth, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth place.
Global Audience Figures
In Canada, the game recorded 11.6 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English-language program in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game started at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six frames – recorded 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in Japan.
Overall Averages and Trends
The full seven-match World Series averaged 15.71 million viewers on the Fox network, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen audience increases for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the opening game broadcast on Univision, the total American viewership reached 16.1 million. The total World Series average in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09M watchers, an eight percent rise compared to the previous year and Fox’s strongest playoff ratings after 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in 16 various languages.
