The nail-biting 11-inning clash that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays by one run drew a combined 51M watchers across the United States, Canada, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball announced this is the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 edition showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s memorable game averaged over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It additionally is the top-rated World Series game since the 2017 Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This represents a 16% improvement compared to the last finale between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked 4th, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 came in eighth, and the third game landed in thirteenth place.
International Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the climactic game recorded over 11 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English broadcast in the country since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest started at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12 million viewers. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – drew 13.1M viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game series recorded 15.71 million audience members on Fox, a two percent rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the first time after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership increases for two consecutive seasons.
Including the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the complete US viewership was 16.1M. The overall Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09 million viewers, an eight percent increase compared to last year and the network’s best postseason ratings after 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen different tongues.
