The nail-biting extended contest that saw the Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays by one run attracted a aggregate 51M viewers across the United States, Canada, and Japanese territories. MLB stated this is the most-watched World Series Game 7 after the 1991 edition contest featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday memorable contest secured 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and their digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It also is the top-rated World Series matchup since the 2017 edition final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement compared to the last Game 7 between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked fourth, Game 4 ranked 7th, Game 5 came in eighth, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth position.
Global Audience Numbers
In Canada, the game recorded 11.6M viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English program in Canada since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest started at 9 PM local time, it attracted 12 million. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – drew 13.1M spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Overall Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game World Series recorded 15.71M audience members on the Fox network, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership increases for two straight seasons.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the complete American average reached over 16 million. The total Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09 million viewers, an 8% rise compared to last year and the network’s best playoff performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball announced that the World Series was televised in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen different tongues.
