The nail-biting extra-inning matchup where the Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays by one run attracted a combined 51 million viewers in the US, Canada, and Japanese markets. MLB announced this marks the highest-rated World Series Game 7 after the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
The Saturday memorable contest drew 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It also is the most-watched Fall Classic game after the 2017 final game involving the Dodgers and Astros, which drew over 29 million. This marks a sixteen percent increase over the last Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked fourth, the fourth game ranked 7th, the fifth game was 8th, and Game 3 landed in 13th place.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the game drew over 11 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English broadcast in the country after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest started at 9 PM local time, it attracted 12 million viewers. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series MVP Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – recorded 13.1M spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-match series recorded 15.71 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership growth for two consecutive years.
Counting the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the total American viewership reached over 16 million. The overall World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09 million viewers, an eight percent increase over last year and the network’s strongest playoff ratings since 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 different languages.
