Fall Classic Game 7 Draws Over 50 Million Audience Members Across the United States, Canadian and Japanese Regions.
The thrilling 11-inning contest that saw the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a combined 51M viewers across the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. MLB stated this marks the most-watched World Series Game 7 since the 1991 contest between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Details
The Saturday epic contest averaged 27.33M viewers on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. Per ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It also stands as the most-watched World Series matchup after the 2017 final game between the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07M. This represents a 16% improvement over the previous finale featuring the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked fourth, the fourth game was seventh, the fifth game was eighth, and the third game landed in thirteenth position.
Global Audience Numbers
In Canada, the game drew 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English-language program in the country after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it drew 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – averaged 13.1M spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game series recorded over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen audience increases for two consecutive years.
Including the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American viewership was 16.1 million. The overall World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09M viewers, an 8% rise over the previous year and the network’s best postseason ratings since 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by 44 media partners in 16 various languages.
