The thrilling extra-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate 51M spectators across the US, Canada, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball reported this is the highest-rated World Series Game 7 after the 1991 contest between the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Details
The Saturday epic contest secured 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It also is the top-rated World Series game since the 2017 final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew over 29 million. This represents a 16% improvement compared to the previous Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game placed 4th, Game 4 was 7th, Game 5 was eighth, and the third game landed in 13th position.
Global Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the climactic game recorded 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English broadcast in the country since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it drew 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series MVP Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – recorded 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-match series drew 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 World Series has recorded viewership increases for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the opening game telecast on Univision, the total US average reached 16.1M. The total Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09 million watchers, an 8% increase over last year and the network’s strongest postseason ratings since 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in sixteen different tongues.
