The nail-biting extra-inning contest that saw the Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a total 51M spectators across the United States, Canada, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball stated this is the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 showdown featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
The Saturday memorable game averaged 27.33 million audience members on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated World Series game since the 2017 Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent increase over the last finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed 4th, Game 4 ranked 7th, the fifth game was eighth, and the third game finished in thirteenth place.
International Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game drew 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English broadcast in the country since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest started at 9 PM local time, it drew 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series MVP Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – drew over 13 million spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-match World Series drew over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded audience increases for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total US average was 16.1 million. The total Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09 million watchers, an 8% rise compared to the previous year and Fox’s best postseason performance since the 2017 season.
MLB reported that the World Series was televised in over 200 countries and territories by 44 media partners in 16 different tongues.
