The thrilling 11-inning contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays by one run attracted a combined 51M spectators in the United States, Canada, and Japanese territories. MLB announced this marks the highest-rated World Series Game 7 after the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic contest drew 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It additionally is the top-rated Fall Classic game since the 2017 final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07M. This represents a 16% increase over the last Game 7 between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked fourth, Game 4 ranked seventh, Game 5 came in 8th, and the third game finished in 13th position.
International Audience Numbers
In Canada, the game averaged 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English-language broadcast in the country after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game began at 9 PM local time, it attracted 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto allowed a single run in six frames – averaged over 13 million spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a single network in Japan.
Overall Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game series recorded 15.71 million viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen viewership growth for two straight seasons.
Counting the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the total American viewership was 16.1M. The total Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million viewers, an 8% increase compared to last year and Fox’s best postseason performance since the 2017 season.
MLB stated that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen various languages.
