The nail-biting 11-inning matchup that saw the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a combined 51 million viewers across the US, Canada, and Japan territories. MLB reported this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Details
The Saturday epic contest secured over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It also stands as the most-watched World Series matchup since the 2017 edition final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This marks a sixteen percent improvement compared to the last Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed 4th, Game 4 was seventh, Game 5 was 8th, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth place.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English broadcast in the country since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it drew 12 million. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – drew over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Trends
The full seven-match series recorded over 15.7 million audience members on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen audience increases for two consecutive years.
Including the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the total US average was 16.1 million. The total Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09 million watchers, an 8% rise compared to the previous year and Fox’s strongest playoff ratings since 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 different languages.
