The exciting 11-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a combined 51M watchers in the US, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball announced this represents the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 contest between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Details
Last Saturday’s memorable contest averaged 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It also stands as the most-watched World Series game since the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the last Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked fourth, the fourth game was seventh, the fifth game came in eighth, and the third game landed in 13th place.
International Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English-language broadcast in Canada since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – drew over 13 million viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-match series drew 15.71 million audience members on Fox, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded viewership increases for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the total American viewership was 16.1 million. The total World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels drew 8.09 million watchers, an eight percent rise compared to the previous year and Fox’s strongest playoff performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen various languages.
