The exciting 11-inning contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays by one run attracted a total over 50 million spectators in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball announced this is the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 showdown featuring the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
The Saturday memorable game secured 27.33M audience members on Fox networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It also is the most-watched Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 edition final game between the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07M. This marks a sixteen percent increase compared to the last Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked fourth, Game 4 was seventh, Game 5 came in 8th, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth position.
Global Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded over 11 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English-language broadcast in Canada after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest started at 9 PM local time, it attracted 12 million. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – drew over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Overall Averages and Trends
The entire seven-game series drew 15.71M audience members on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen viewership increases for two straight seasons.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the complete US viewership reached 16.1M. The overall Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09 million viewers, an 8% rise compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest playoff performance after 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was televised in 203 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in sixteen various tongues.
