The nail-biting extra-inning clash where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run averaged a total 51M viewers across the United States, Canadian, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball reported this marks the highest-rated World Series Game 7 after the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest averaged 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It also is the top-rated Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement compared to the last finale featuring the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game placed 4th, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game came in 8th, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth place.
International Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game drew over 11 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English-language program 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 12M. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – recorded 13.1 million spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Overall Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-game World Series averaged 15.71 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded viewership growth for two straight seasons.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the total US average was 16.1 million. The total World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels averaged over 8 million watchers, an eight percent rise compared to last year and the network’s best playoff ratings since the 2017 season.
MLB reported that the World Series was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen various languages.
