The nail-biting 11-inning matchup that saw the Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run averaged a combined 51M watchers across the US, Canadian, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball reported this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 showdown featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest drew over 27 million viewers on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It also stands as the most-watched World Series matchup since the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a 16% improvement compared to the previous finale between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed 4th, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game was 8th, and Game 3 finished in 13th position.
International Viewership Figures
In Canada, the climactic game drew over 11 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English program in Canada after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest started at 9 PM local time, it drew 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – drew 13.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Overall Totals and Trends
The full seven-game series drew 15.71 million audience members on Fox, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership increases for two straight seasons.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete US average reached 16.1 million. The overall World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09 million watchers, an eight percent rise compared to the previous year and Fox’s strongest postseason performance after 2017.
MLB stated that the World Series was televised in 203 countries and territories by 44 media partners in 16 different tongues.
