The exciting extended contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a aggregate 51M viewers across the US, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball reported this is the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 edition contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
The Saturday memorable game secured over 27 million viewers on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched World Series game since the 2017 final game between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07M. This marks a 16% increase compared to the last finale featuring the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game came in eighth, and the third game landed in 13th position.
Global Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game drew 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English broadcast in the country after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game started at 9 PM local time, it attracted 12M. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – averaged 13.1 million spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Trends
The full seven-match series averaged 15.71 million viewers on the Fox network, a two percent rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership increases for two straight years.
Counting the opening game telecast on Univision, the complete US viewership was 16.1 million. The total Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09M viewers, an 8% increase over the previous year and the network’s strongest playoff performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by 44 media partners in 16 different tongues.
