The nail-biting extended contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run attracted a combined over 50 million spectators across the United States, Canadian, and Japan territories. MLB reported this represents the most-watched World Series Game 7 after the 1991 edition contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic game secured 27.33 million viewers on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and their digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement compared to the last finale featuring the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed 4th, Game 4 ranked seventh, Game 5 came in 8th, and the third game finished in 13th place.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the game averaged 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English broadcast in Canada since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – drew 13.1 million spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in Japan.
Series Averages and Patterns
The full seven-game World Series drew 15.71M audience members on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded audience increases for two consecutive seasons.
Including the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the total American average was 16.1M. The overall Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09M viewers, an 8% increase over last year and the network’s best playoff performance since 2017.
MLB stated that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen different languages.
