The nail-biting extended clash where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run attracted a combined 51 million viewers in the US, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball announced this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 edition contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic game averaged over 27 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated World Series game since the 2017 final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This marks a sixteen percent improvement over the last finale between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed fourth, Game 4 ranked 7th, the fifth game came in 8th, and Game 3 landed in 13th place.
Global Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the climactic game recorded 11.6M watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English-language broadcast in the country after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest began at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – averaged 13.1 million spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Overall Totals and Trends
The entire seven-match series recorded over 15.7 million audience members on Fox, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the first time after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen viewership growth for two straight years.
Including the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the complete US viewership was 16.1M. The total World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09M watchers, an 8% increase compared to the previous year and Fox’s strongest playoff performance since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball announced that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in 16 different tongues.
