The nail-biting extended contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run drew a combined 51M viewers in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball announced this represents the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Details
Last Saturday’s epic contest drew 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It additionally is the top-rated Fall Classic game since the 2017 edition final game involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent increase compared to the previous Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked fourth, the fourth game was 7th, the fifth game was eighth, and the third game finished in thirteenth position.
Global Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game drew 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English program in Canada after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million viewers. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – averaged over 13 million spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-match series drew 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the first time since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience growth for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the total US viewership reached 16.1M. The overall Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded over 8 million watchers, an eight percent rise compared to last year and the network’s best postseason performance after 2017.
Major League Baseball announced that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 various languages.
