The nail-biting 11-inning matchup that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run attracted a aggregate 51M spectators across the United States, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball announced this represents the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
The Saturday memorable contest averaged over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and their digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated World Series matchup since the 2017 final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a 16% increase compared to the previous Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked fourth, Game 4 ranked 7th, the fifth game was eighth, and the third game finished in 13th position.
Global Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English program in the country after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – recorded 13.1M spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-game World Series recorded 15.71M viewers on Fox, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the first time since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen audience increases for two straight years.
Counting the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the total US viewership reached 16.1M. The total Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged over 8 million watchers, an 8% rise over last year and the network’s best postseason ratings after 2017.
MLB stated that the World Series was televised in 203 countries and territories by 44 media partners in sixteen different tongues.
