The nail-biting 11-inning clash that saw the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a total 51 million spectators in the US, Canadian, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball reported this marks the most-watched World Series Game 7 after the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
Last Saturday’s memorable contest secured 27.33M audience members on Fox networks, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It also is the top-rated Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a 16% improvement over the last finale between the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked fourth, the fourth game was 7th, Game 5 was 8th, and Game 3 landed in 13th position.
Global Audience Figures
In Canada, the climactic game recorded 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English broadcast in the country after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest began at 9 p.m. local time, it attracted 12 million. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – averaged 13.1 million spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Overall Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-match World Series averaged 15.71M viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen viewership increases for two consecutive seasons.
Including the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the complete US average was 16.1M. The overall World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09 million viewers, an 8% rise compared to the previous year and Fox’s strongest playoff performance after 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in sixteen different tongues.
