The thrilling extended contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays by one run attracted a aggregate over 50 million viewers in the United States, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball stated this represents the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 contest between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic game averaged 27.33M viewers on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally is the top-rated Fall Classic game since the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This marks a sixteen percent improvement over the last finale between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked fourth, Game 4 was 7th, Game 5 was 8th, and Game 3 landed in 13th place.
International Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English program in the country after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest started at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto allowed one run in six frames – averaged over 13 million viewers, making it the most-watched World Series game on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-game series recorded over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience growth for two straight years.
Including the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the total American average was 16.1M. The overall World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09M watchers, an eight percent increase over the previous year and Fox’s strongest playoff performance since the 2017 season.
MLB stated that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 nations and regions by 44 media partners in sixteen different tongues.
