The nail-biting 11-inning contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a combined 51 million spectators across the United States, Canadian, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball announced this represents the highest-rated World Series Game 7 since the 1991 showdown featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Details
The Saturday epic contest secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated Fall Classic game since the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a 16% increase compared to the last finale between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked fourth, Game 4 was 7th, the fifth game was 8th, and the third game landed in 13th place.
Global Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the game recorded 11.6 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English program in the country after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game began at 9 p.m. local time, it drew 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – drew over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Series Totals and Patterns
The full seven-game World Series drew 15.71M viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This represents the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen viewership increases for two straight seasons.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete US average reached 16.1 million. The total World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels recorded over 8 million viewers, an 8% rise compared to last year and the network’s strongest postseason performance since 2017.
MLB reported that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by 44 media partners in 16 different tongues.
