The nail-biting 11-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays by one run drew a total 51M viewers across the United States, Canada, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball announced this is the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 edition showdown featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
Last Saturday’s memorable contest drew over 27 million viewers on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and their digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It additionally is the top-rated World Series game since the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew over 29 million. This represents a sixteen percent increase over the last Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked fourth, Game 4 ranked 7th, the fifth game came in 8th, and Game 3 landed in 13th place.
International Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged 11.6 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English-language broadcast in Canada since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million viewers. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – recorded 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-game World Series recorded 15.71M audience members on Fox, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This represents the first time since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded audience increases for two consecutive years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the complete American average was over 16 million. The overall World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09 million viewers, an 8% increase over the previous year and Fox’s best postseason performance since the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in 16 various tongues.
