The thrilling extended matchup that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a aggregate 51M watchers across the United States, Canadian, and Japan territories. MLB stated this marks the highest-rated World Series Game 7 after the 1991 edition showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It additionally is the top-rated Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07M. This marks a sixteen percent improvement compared to the last Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed fourth, Game 4 ranked seventh, Game 5 was 8th, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth place.
International Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the climactic game recorded 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English program in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million viewers. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – drew 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in Japan.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game series recorded 15.71 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen audience increases for two straight years.
Counting the opening game broadcast on Univision, the complete US average was 16.1 million. The total Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09 million viewers, an eight percent rise compared to the previous year and Fox’s strongest playoff performance after 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 different languages.
