The thrilling extra-inning contest where the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a combined 51M watchers across the United States, Canada, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball announced this marks the most-watched World Series Game 7 since the 1991 showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated Fall Classic game after the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew over 29 million. This represents a 16% improvement over the last Game 7 between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed fourth, the fourth game ranked seventh, the fifth game was eighth, and the third game finished in thirteenth place.
Global Viewership Figures
In Canada, the game recorded over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English-language program in Canada after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it drew 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – drew over 13 million spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Overall Averages and Trends
The entire seven-match World Series recorded 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 Fall Classic has seen audience growth for two straight years.
Counting the opening game broadcast on Univision, the total US viewership was over 16 million. The overall World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09M watchers, an eight percent increase over last year and the network’s best postseason performance since 2017.
MLB reported that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by 44 media partners in sixteen different languages.
