The nail-biting extra-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run drew a aggregate over 50 million spectators in the United States, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball stated this marks the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 showdown featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
Last Saturday’s memorable game drew over 27 million viewers on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It also stands as the most-watched World Series game since the 2017 Game 7 between the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a 16% improvement over the previous Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked fourth, Game 4 ranked seventh, the fifth game came in 8th, and Game 3 landed in 13th position.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the game drew over 11 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English-language broadcast in Canada after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – recorded over 13 million spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Series Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-match series averaged 15.71 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership growth for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the complete American viewership was 16.1 million. The overall Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew over 8 million watchers, an 8% increase over the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason ratings since 2017.
MLB stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen different languages.
