The nail-biting extended matchup where the Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate 51 million spectators in the United States, Canada, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball announced this marks the highest-rated World Series Game 7 after the 1991 contest between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday memorable game secured 27.33 million viewers on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It also stands as the top-rated World Series matchup since the 2017 final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent increase compared to the last Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked 4th, Game 4 ranked seventh, the fifth game was 8th, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth position.
International Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the game averaged 11.6 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English-language program in the country after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it drew 12 million. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – recorded over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Overall Averages and Patterns
The full seven-game series averaged 15.71 million audience members on Fox, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen audience increases for two consecutive years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the total American viewership reached 16.1M. The total World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09M watchers, an 8% increase over the previous year and the network’s best playoff performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 various languages.