The nail-biting extra-inning contest that saw the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a combined 51 million watchers in the US, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball stated this marks the highest-rated World Series Game 7 after the 1991 showdown featuring the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest drew 27.33 million viewers on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to ratings data, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It additionally is the most-watched Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 final game between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement compared to the last Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked fourth, the fourth game ranked seventh, the fifth game was 8th, and Game 3 finished in 13th place.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the game recorded 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English-language broadcast in Canada since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game started at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12 million viewers. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – drew 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Patterns
The full seven-match series drew 15.71M audience members on the Fox network, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the first time after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience growth for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the complete US viewership was 16.1M. The total Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1M in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew over 8 million watchers, an eight percent rise over the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason ratings since 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by 44 media partners in sixteen various tongues.
