The nail-biting extra-inning clash where the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a total over 50 million watchers in the US, Canada, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball announced this represents the most-watched World Series Game 7 after the 1991 contest between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Details
The Saturday epic contest secured 27.33M viewers on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and their digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated Fall Classic game after the 2017 final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew over 29 million. This marks a 16% increase over the last Game 7 between the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked fourth, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 came in 8th, and the third game landed in 13th place.
International Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the climactic game recorded 11.6M watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English program in the country since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game started at 9 PM local time, it attracted 12M. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – averaged 13.1M spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Patterns
The full seven-game series averaged 15.71 million viewers on Fox, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the first time after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership growth for two straight seasons.
Counting the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the complete US viewership was 16.1 million. The total World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09M viewers, an eight percent rise over the previous year and the network’s best playoff performance since 2017.
MLB stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by 44 media partners in 16 various languages.
