The thrilling extended clash where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a aggregate 51 million spectators across the US, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball reported this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest averaged over 27 million viewers on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It also stands as the most-watched Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 final game between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a 16% increase compared to the last Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game ranked 7th, the fifth game came in eighth, and Game 3 landed in 13th position.
International Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the game averaged 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English-language broadcast in Canada since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest began at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12M. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series MVP Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – recorded 13.1 million spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-match series averaged 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded viewership growth for two straight years.
Including the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the complete American viewership was 16.1 million. The total Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1M in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09 million viewers, an 8% increase over the previous year and Fox’s strongest playoff performance since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 different tongues.
