The nail-biting extended matchup where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run drew a total 51M watchers in the United States, Canada, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball announced this represents the highest-rated World Series Game 7 since the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday memorable contest drew 27.33M viewers on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched World Series game since the 2017 final game involving the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07M. This represents a 16% improvement over the previous Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked fourth, Game 4 was seventh, Game 5 came in eighth, and the third game finished in 13th place.
International Audience Numbers
In Canada, the game recorded 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English-language program in the country after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it attracted 12M. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – drew over 13 million spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Series Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-match World Series recorded over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded audience growth for two consecutive years.
Including the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the complete US viewership reached 16.1 million. The total World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million viewers, an eight percent rise compared to the previous year and Fox’s strongest playoff ratings after 2017.
Major League Baseball announced that the World Series was televised in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in 16 different tongues.
