The nail-biting extra-inning clash where the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a total 51 million viewers across the United States, Canadian, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball announced this is the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s epic contest drew over 27 million viewers on Fox networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It additionally is the most-watched World Series game after the 2017 edition final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This represents a 16% increase over the previous Game 7 between the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked fourth, the fourth game was 7th, Game 5 was eighth, and Game 3 landed in 13th place.
Global Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged over 11 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English-language broadcast in the country since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest began at 9 PM local time, it attracted 12 million. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series MVP Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – averaged over 13 million spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Series Averages and Trends
The entire seven-match World Series averaged over 15.7 million audience members on Fox, a two percent rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded viewership growth for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the complete American viewership was 16.1M. The overall 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 over 8 million viewers, an 8% increase compared to last year and Fox’s strongest postseason ratings since 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 various tongues.
