The exciting 11-inning clash where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays by one run drew a aggregate 51 million spectators in the US, Canada, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball announced this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
The Saturday epic contest drew over 27 million audience members on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and their digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It also stands as the top-rated Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 final game between the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This represents a 16% improvement compared to the previous Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked fourth, the fourth game ranked 7th, Game 5 was eighth, and the third game landed in thirteenth position.
Global Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the climactic game recorded 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English broadcast in Canada since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game began at 9 PM local time, it drew 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – drew 13.1 million spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The full seven-game World Series averaged 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the first time after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience increases for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American average was over 16 million. The overall Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1M in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09M watchers, an 8% increase compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason performance since the 2017 season.
MLB stated that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 countries and territories by 44 media partners in sixteen different languages.
