The nail-biting 11-inning matchup that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a combined 51 million spectators across the US, Canadian, and Japan territories. MLB reported this represents the highest-rated World Series Game 7 since the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest drew over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It additionally is the most-watched Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 edition final game between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This marks a 16% improvement compared to the previous finale between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked fourth, the fourth game was seventh, the fifth game was 8th, and the third game landed in thirteenth place.
International Viewership Figures
In Canada, the climactic game averaged over 11 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English-language program in the country since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it drew 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series MVP Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – recorded 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in Japan.
Series Averages and Patterns
The full seven-game World Series drew over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership increases for two straight seasons.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete US viewership reached 16.1 million. The overall World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09 million viewers, an 8% increase compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest playoff performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was televised in 203 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen different tongues.
