The nail-biting extra-inning clash that saw the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays by one run drew a aggregate 51M spectators across the US, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball announced this is the highest-rated World Series Game 7 after the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
The Saturday memorable contest secured 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated Fall Classic game since the 2017 Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07M. This represents a 16% improvement compared to the last Game 7 between the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked 4th, Game 4 ranked seventh, Game 5 came in 8th, and the third game finished in 13th place.
International Audience Figures
In Canada, the game recorded 11.6M viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English broadcast in the country after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest started at 9 PM local time, it attracted 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – averaged 13.1M spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Overall Averages and Trends
The full seven-match series averaged 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen audience growth for two consecutive years.
Counting the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the complete US viewership was over 16 million. The total Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09M watchers, an eight percent rise compared to the previous year and Fox’s strongest playoff ratings since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball announced that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 different languages.
