The thrilling extended contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays by one run drew a total 51M watchers in the United States, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball reported this is the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 edition contest featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Details
The Saturday epic contest drew 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It additionally is the most-watched World Series game since the 2017 Game 7 between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07M. This marks a 16% increase compared to the last Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed 4th, Game 4 was seventh, Game 5 was 8th, and Game 3 landed in 13th place.
International Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the game drew 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English program in the country since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it drew 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series MVP Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – averaged 13.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Series Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game World Series recorded 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded viewership increases for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American average reached over 16 million. The overall World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09M viewers, an eight percent rise over the previous year and the network’s strongest playoff ratings after 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen different tongues.
