The thrilling extra-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a aggregate 51 million spectators in the United States, Canada, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball announced this represents the most-watched World Series Game 7 after the 1991 showdown featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest secured 27.33M audience members on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. According to ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched Fall Classic game after the 2017 edition final game involving the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent increase compared to the previous Game 7 between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed 4th, Game 4 was 7th, the fifth game was 8th, and Game 3 landed in 13th position.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged 11.6M viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English-language program in the country after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – recorded 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Overall Averages and Trends
The entire seven-game World Series averaged 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen viewership increases for two consecutive years.
Including the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the complete US average was 16.1M. The overall Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million viewers, an eight percent increase over last year and the network’s strongest postseason ratings since 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was televised in over 200 nations and regions by 44 media partners in sixteen different tongues.
