The nail-biting extended clash where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate 51 million spectators in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball announced this represents the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 edition contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s epic contest secured over 27 million audience members on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It also stands as the top-rated World Series game after the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the previous finale between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed 4th, Game 4 ranked 7th, Game 5 came in eighth, and the third game landed in 13th place.
International Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game drew over 11 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English 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 viewers. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – averaged 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game series averaged over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the first time since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience growth for two consecutive years.
Counting the opening game broadcast on Univision, the total American average was 16.1 million. The overall Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09 million watchers, an 8% rise over the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason performance since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was televised in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen various languages.
