The exciting 11-inning contest that saw the Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run attracted a total 51M viewers across the US, Canada, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball announced this marks the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 showdown featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday memorable game averaged 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It also stands as the most-watched Fall Classic game since the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement over the last Game 7 between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked 4th, Game 4 ranked 7th, Game 5 was eighth, and the third game landed in thirteenth position.
Global Viewership Figures
In Canada, the climactic game drew 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English program in the country since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game started at 9 PM local time, it attracted 12 million viewers. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed one run in six frames – recorded over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Series Averages and Patterns
The full seven-game World Series drew 15.71 million audience members on the Fox network, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the first time after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded audience growth for two straight seasons.
Including the opening game broadcast on Univision, the complete US average was over 16 million. The total Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09M viewers, an eight percent increase over the previous year and Fox’s strongest playoff performance after 2017.
MLB reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen different languages.