The nail-biting extra-inning matchup where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a total 51M spectators in the United States, Canada, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball announced this marks the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 showdown between the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s memorable game averaged 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a 16% improvement over the last Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed 4th, the fourth game was 7th, the fifth game was eighth, and Game 3 landed in 13th position.
Global Audience Numbers
In Canada, the climactic game drew 11.6 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English-language broadcast in the country since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game started at 9 PM local time, it attracted 12 million. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – drew 13.1 million spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-match World Series averaged over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen viewership increases for two straight seasons.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the complete American viewership reached over 16 million. The total World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09M watchers, an eight percent rise over last year and the network’s strongest postseason performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen various tongues.
