The nail-biting extra-inning clash where the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a combined 51M viewers in the United States, Canada, and Japanese markets. MLB announced this marks the highest-rated World Series Game 7 after the 1991 contest between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
Last Saturday’s memorable contest secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It also stands as the top-rated World Series game since the 2017 edition final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a 16% improvement over the last Game 7 between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked 4th, the fourth game was 7th, the fifth game was eighth, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth place.
Global Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game recorded over 11 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English program in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – recorded 13.1M spectators, making it the most-watched World Series game on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-game series drew over 15.7 million audience members on Fox, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership increases for two straight seasons.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the total American viewership reached over 16 million. The overall World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded over 8 million watchers, an 8% increase compared to the previous year and Fox’s strongest postseason performance after 2017.
MLB reported that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 various tongues.
