The thrilling extended contest that saw the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a combined over 50 million viewers across the US, Canadian, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball announced this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 edition showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
The Saturday epic game drew over 27 million viewers on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. According to ratings data, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It also is the top-rated World Series matchup since the 2017 Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This represents a 16% improvement over the previous finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked 4th, the fourth game was 7th, Game 5 came in eighth, and the third game finished in thirteenth place.
International Viewership Figures
In Canada, the game drew 11.6 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English program in the country after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game started at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12 million. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – averaged 13.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Overall Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-match World Series averaged 15.71 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience increases for two consecutive seasons.
Including the opening game broadcast on Univision, the total US viewership reached over 16 million. The total Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew over 8 million viewers, an 8% increase over last year and the network’s strongest postseason performance since the 2017 season.
MLB reported that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen different tongues.
