The thrilling extra-inning contest that saw the Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run attracted a total over 50 million spectators across the US, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball stated this is the most-watched World Series Game 7 since the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic game secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It also is the most-watched World Series game since the 2017 final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This marks a sixteen percent improvement over the previous finale featuring the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked fourth, the fourth game was 7th, the fifth game was eighth, and the third game landed in thirteenth position.
Global Audience Figures
In Canada, the climactic game recorded 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English-language broadcast in Canada since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest began at 9 p.m. local time, it drew 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – drew 13.1M spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Series Averages and Patterns
The full seven-game World Series averaged 15.71 million audience members on Fox, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen viewership increases for two straight seasons.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total US average reached 16.1M. The overall World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels averaged over 8 million viewers, an eight percent increase compared to the previous year and Fox’s strongest playoff ratings since the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the World Series was televised in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in 16 different tongues.
