The thrilling extra-inning clash that saw the Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a combined 51 million spectators across the US, Canada, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball announced this represents the highest-rated World Series Game 7 after the 1991 edition contest between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s memorable contest drew 27.33M audience members on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated World Series game since the 2017 Game 7 between the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the previous Game 7 between the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked fourth, Game 4 ranked 7th, the fifth game was 8th, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth place.
Global Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game drew 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English-language program in the country since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six frames – recorded over 13 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 series drew over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the first time after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen audience growth for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the complete American viewership was 16.1M. The total Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09 million watchers, an eight percent rise compared to the previous year and Fox’s strongest postseason performance after 2017.
MLB announced that the World Series was televised in 203 nations and regions by 44 media partners in 16 different languages.
