The thrilling 11-inning clash that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a total 51 million watchers across the United States, Canada, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball reported this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
The Saturday epic game drew over 27 million viewers on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It additionally is the most-watched World Series game after the 2017 Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a 16% improvement over the last Game 7 between the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked fourth, Game 4 was 7th, the fifth game was 8th, and the third game landed in thirteenth position.
International Audience Numbers
In Canada, the game averaged 11.6M watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English program in Canada since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game began at 9 PM local time, it attracted 12 million. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series MVP Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – drew over 13 million spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Trends
The full seven-match series recorded over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership increases for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the complete American viewership reached over 16 million. The total Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09M watchers, an eight percent rise over last year and the network’s best playoff performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in 16 different tongues.
