The nail-biting extra-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a combined 51 million spectators in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball announced this represents the most-watched World Series Game 7 since the 1991 edition showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s memorable contest averaged 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It also stands as the top-rated Fall Classic game after the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement compared to the previous Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed fourth, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game was 8th, and Game 3 landed in 13th position.
Global Audience Figures
In Canada, the climactic game drew 11.6 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English broadcast in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million viewers. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – averaged 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The full seven-match series drew over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a two percent rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience increases for two consecutive years.
Including the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the complete American average was over 16 million. The overall Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1M in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million viewers, an 8% increase over the previous year and the network’s strongest playoff ratings since 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen various languages.
