The nail-biting 11-inning matchup that saw the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a combined over 50 million spectators across the United States, Canada, and Japanese markets. MLB announced this represents the most-watched World Series Game 7 after the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday memorable game secured 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It also stands as the top-rated Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a sixteen percent increase over the previous finale between the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 was seventh, Game 5 was 8th, and the third game landed in thirteenth place.
Global Audience Numbers
In Canada, the climactic game recorded 11.6 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English broadcast in Canada after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game began at 9 p.m. local time, it drew 12M. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – averaged over 13 million viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Trends
The full seven-match series drew over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded audience increases for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the total American viewership reached 16.1 million. The overall Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09 million viewers, an eight percent increase compared to last year and the network’s strongest playoff performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen various languages.
