The nail-biting extended contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays by one run drew a total 51M watchers across the United States, Canada, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball reported this represents the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
The Saturday epic game averaged 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally is the top-rated Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 edition final game involving the Dodgers and Astros, which drew over 29 million. This represents a 16% improvement over the last Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game ranked seventh, the fifth game came in 8th, and the third game finished in thirteenth place.
International Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game recorded over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English program in Canada after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million viewers. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six frames – recorded over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Series Totals and Trends
The full seven-game series drew 15.71 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen audience increases for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the complete American average reached 16.1 million. The total Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09 million watchers, an eight percent rise over the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball announced that the World Series was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 different languages.
