The exciting extra-inning contest where the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run averaged a aggregate over 50 million watchers across the United States, Canadian, and Japan territories. MLB stated this is the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 edition showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
The Saturday memorable game drew over 27 million viewers on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched World Series matchup since the 2017 final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent increase compared to the last Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 ranked seventh, the fifth game was 8th, and Game 3 finished in 13th place.
International Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded 11.6M watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English program in the country after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – averaged 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-match series recorded 15.71M viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen viewership increases for two consecutive seasons.
Including the opening game broadcast on Univision, the complete American viewership reached 16.1 million. The overall World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09M watchers, an 8% increase compared to the previous year and the network’s best playoff performance after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball stated that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 various languages.
