The nail-biting extended matchup that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate 51M spectators across the US, Canadian, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball reported this marks the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic game secured 27.33M viewers on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated Fall Classic game since the 2017 final game involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the last Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 ranked seventh, the fifth game came in eighth, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth place.
Global Viewership Figures
In Canada, the climactic game averaged 11.6M viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English broadcast in Canada after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million viewers. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed one run in six frames – drew over 13 million spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Patterns
The full seven-game World Series recorded 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the first time since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership growth for two straight seasons.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the complete US viewership reached over 16 million. The total World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels drew 8.09 million viewers, an eight percent increase compared to the previous year and the network’s best postseason performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in 16 different tongues.
