The nail-biting 11-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a combined 51M spectators in the US, Canadian, and Japanese territories. MLB reported this represents the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest averaged over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It additionally is the most-watched Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 final game involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent increase over the previous finale between the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed 4th, the fourth game was 7th, Game 5 came in eighth, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth place.
Global Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game drew over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English-language program in the country after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million viewers. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – recorded 13.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a single network in Japan.
Series Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-game World Series averaged over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership increases for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the total American average reached 16.1 million. The overall World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09 million viewers, an eight percent rise over last year and the network’s best postseason ratings since 2017.
MLB announced that the World Series was televised in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 various tongues.
