The nail-biting 11-inning matchup that saw the Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a combined 51M watchers across the United States, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball stated this marks the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 contest between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s epic contest secured 27.33 million viewers on Fox networks, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. According to ratings data, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It also is the most-watched World Series game since the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew over 29 million. This marks a sixteen percent increase over the previous finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed fourth, Game 4 ranked seventh, the fifth game was eighth, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth position.
International Audience Figures
In Canada, the climactic game recorded 11.6M watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English program in Canada after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game started at 9 p.m. local time, it drew 12M. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – recorded over 13 million viewers, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Trends
The entire seven-game series drew 15.71 million viewers on the Fox network, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen viewership increases for two consecutive seasons.
Including the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the complete US average was 16.1M. The overall World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded over 8 million viewers, an eight percent rise compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason performance since 2017.
MLB announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen different languages.
