The nail-biting extra-inning clash that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate 51M spectators in the United States, Canadian, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball announced this represents the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
The Saturday epic contest secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It also stands as the most-watched World Series matchup since the 2017 final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement compared to the previous finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked 4th, Game 4 ranked seventh, the fifth game came in eighth, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth position.
International Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the game drew 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English-language program in Canada after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest started at 9 p.m. local time, it attracted 12 million viewers. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – averaged over 13 million viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game World Series drew 15.71 million audience members on Fox, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded audience increases for two straight seasons.
Counting the opening game telecast on Univision, the complete American average was over 16 million. The total World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels drew 8.09M watchers, an 8% rise over the previous year and the network’s strongest playoff performance after 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen various tongues.
