The thrilling 11-inning clash that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a combined 51M viewers across the United States, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball stated this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
The Saturday epic contest averaged 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and their digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally is the top-rated World Series game since the 2017 edition final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a 16% increase over the last Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game ranked seventh, Game 5 came in 8th, and the third game finished in 13th position.
Global Viewership Figures
In Canada, the game recorded over 11 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English program in the country after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game started at 9 PM local time, it attracted 12 million viewers. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – recorded over 13 million spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The full seven-game series drew 15.71 million viewers on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience growth for two straight seasons.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the total US average reached over 16 million. The total Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09 million viewers, an eight percent increase over the previous year and the network’s best postseason ratings since 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 various languages.
