The exciting 11-inning clash that saw the Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a total over 50 million watchers across the United States, Canadian, and Japanese markets. MLB reported this marks the most-watched World Series Game 7 since the 1991 contest between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday memorable game drew over 27 million audience members on Fox networks, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It also stands as the most-watched World Series matchup since the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07M. This marks a sixteen percent improvement over the last Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked fourth, Game 4 was 7th, Game 5 was eighth, and the third game landed in 13th position.
International Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded 11.6M viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English program in the country since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – recorded 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Trends
The full seven-match series recorded 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience growth for two straight seasons.
Including the opening game telecast on Univision, the total US viewership reached 16.1M. The total Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09 million viewers, an eight percent rise compared to the previous year and the network’s best playoff performance since the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by 44 media partners in sixteen various languages.
