The nail-biting extended contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate 51M watchers in the US, Canadian, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball announced this marks the highest-rated World Series Game 7 since the 1991 edition showdown between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
The Saturday memorable game averaged over 27 million audience members on Fox networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It also is the most-watched World Series matchup since the 2017 final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This represents a 16% increase over the previous finale featuring the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed fourth, Game 4 ranked seventh, Game 5 was 8th, and the third game landed in 13th place.
Global Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the game drew 11.6M viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English program in Canada since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game started at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12 million. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – averaged 13.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Series Averages and Trends
The entire seven-match series averaged 15.71 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership increases for two straight seasons.
Counting the opening game broadcast on Univision, the total US viewership reached over 16 million. The overall World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09M viewers, an eight percent increase compared to the previous year and the network’s best postseason performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in 16 various tongues.
