The thrilling extra-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays by one run averaged a aggregate 51M watchers across the US, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball announced this represents the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s epic game secured over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It also is the top-rated Fall Classic game since the 2017 edition final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a 16% improvement compared to the last Game 7 between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked 4th, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game came in eighth, and the third game finished in 13th position.
International Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game recorded 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English broadcast in the country after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest started at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – drew 13.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Series Averages and Trends
The entire seven-match World Series averaged over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership increases for two consecutive seasons.
Including the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the total US average reached 16.1 million. The overall World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09M viewers, an eight percent rise over the previous year and Fox’s strongest playoff performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball announced that the World Series was televised in 203 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen different tongues.
