The thrilling extra-inning contest where the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays by one run drew a aggregate 51 million viewers in the US, Canadian, and Japanese markets. MLB reported this is the most-watched World Series Game 7 after the 1991 edition showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic game averaged 27.33M viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It also stands as the top-rated Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent increase compared to the previous finale featuring the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed 4th, the fourth game ranked seventh, the fifth game was 8th, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth position.
International Audience Figures
In Canada, the game averaged over 11 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English-language broadcast in Canada since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest began at 9 PM local time, it drew 12M. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – drew 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-match World Series drew over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a two percent rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen viewership growth for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American viewership was over 16 million. The overall World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09M viewers, an 8% increase over the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason ratings since 2017.
MLB stated that the World Series was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen various tongues.
