The nail-biting extra-inning contest that saw the Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a combined over 50 million spectators in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese markets. MLB stated this marks the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s epic contest averaged 27.33 million audience members on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It also is the top-rated Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 edition final game between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This represents a 16% increase compared to the last finale between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 was 7th, the fifth game was eighth, and the third game finished in 13th place.
International Audience Figures
In Canada, the game recorded 11.6M watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English program in the country after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – recorded over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Trends
The entire seven-match World Series drew 15.71 million viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen audience growth for two straight seasons.
Including the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the total US viewership was 16.1 million. The total Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09 million viewers, an eight percent increase over the previous year and Fox’s best postseason ratings since 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by 44 media partners in sixteen different languages.
