The exciting extra-inning contest that saw the Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays by one run attracted a combined over 50 million spectators across the US, Canadian, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball stated this marks the highest-rated World Series Game 7 since the 1991 contest between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Details
The Saturday epic contest drew 27.33M viewers on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and their digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It also is the top-rated World Series game since the 2017 final game involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew over 29 million. This marks a sixteen percent increase compared to the previous Game 7 between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked fourth, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game was eighth, and the third game finished in 13th place.
Global Viewership Figures
In Canada, the game averaged 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English-language broadcast in the country since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed one run in six frames – drew over 13 million spectators, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The full seven-game series recorded 15.71 million viewers on the Fox network, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded viewership growth for two consecutive seasons.
Including the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the total US average reached 16.1M. The total Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged over 8 million viewers, an 8% rise compared to last year and Fox’s strongest postseason performance since the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 various languages.
