The exciting extra-inning clash that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a combined over 50 million viewers across the United States, Canadian, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball announced this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 edition contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
The Saturday epic contest secured over 27 million viewers on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It also stands as the most-watched Fall Classic game since the 2017 edition final game between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a 16% improvement compared to the previous Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked fourth, the fourth game ranked 7th, the fifth game came in eighth, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth place.
Global Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the game drew over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English broadcast in Canada since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest started at 9 PM local time, it attracted 12 million. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series MVP Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – averaged 13.1M spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Trends
The full seven-game World Series averaged 15.71M viewers on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen audience increases for two consecutive seasons.
Including the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the complete American average was over 16 million. The overall Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09M watchers, an eight percent increase compared to the previous year and the network’s best playoff performance after 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen different languages.
