The nail-biting extended matchup where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays by one run drew a combined over 50 million spectators across the United States, Canada, and Japan markets. MLB announced this represents the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday memorable game averaged 27.33 million viewers on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 Game 7 between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew over 29 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement compared to the previous Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked fourth, Game 4 ranked seventh, the fifth game was 8th, and Game 3 finished in 13th position.
Global Viewership Figures
In Canada, the climactic game drew over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English program in Canada after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest began at 9 PM local time, it drew 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – drew 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in the country.
Overall Averages and Trends
The entire seven-match World Series averaged 15.71 million audience members on Fox, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the first time since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership increases for two straight seasons.
Including the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the complete US viewership was 16.1 million. The overall Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09M watchers, an eight percent increase over last year and Fox’s best postseason performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen different tongues.
