The nail-biting 11-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a aggregate 51M watchers across the US, Canadian, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball stated this is the most-watched World Series Game 7 since the 1991 showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic game averaged 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It also stands as the most-watched World Series game since the 2017 edition final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew over 29 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement over the previous finale between the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed fourth, Game 4 was 7th, Game 5 came in eighth, and Game 3 finished in 13th position.
Global Audience Figures
In Canada, the climactic game averaged 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English broadcast in the country after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – averaged over 13 million viewers, making it the most-watched World Series game on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Overall Averages and Trends
The entire seven-match series recorded over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen audience increases for two straight years.
Counting the opening game broadcast on Univision, the total US viewership reached 16.1 million. The total World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09M watchers, an 8% increase compared to the previous year and the network’s best postseason ratings since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen various languages.
