The thrilling 11-inning matchup that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a aggregate 51M viewers across the United States, Canada, and Japan territories. MLB announced this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 contest between the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday memorable contest secured 27.33M audience members on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per ratings data, 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 Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement over the last Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed fourth, Game 4 ranked 7th, Game 5 came in 8th, and the third game finished in thirteenth place.
International Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the game drew 11.6 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English-language broadcast in the country since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest started at 9 PM local time, it drew 12 million. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series MVP Yamamoto allowed one run in six frames – averaged 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-match World Series drew over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a two percent rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen audience growth for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total American viewership reached 16.1M. The total World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew over 8 million viewers, an 8% increase over the previous year and the network’s best postseason ratings since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball stated that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in sixteen different languages.
