The nail-biting 11-inning matchup that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a combined over 50 million watchers across the US, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball reported this represents the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 edition contest between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Details
The Saturday epic game drew 27.33M audience members on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated Fall Classic game since the 2017 edition final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew over 29 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement compared to the previous finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 ranked seventh, the fifth game was eighth, and the third game finished in thirteenth place.
International Audience Numbers
In Canada, the game drew 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English-language program in the country since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it drew 12 million. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – drew over 13 million spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a single network in Japan.
Overall Averages and Trends
The entire seven-game series averaged over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership growth for two straight years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the total American viewership reached over 16 million. The overall World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels drew 8.09 million watchers, an 8% rise over last year and Fox’s best playoff ratings since 2017.
MLB announced that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen different languages.
