The nail-biting extended contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run drew a aggregate over 50 million watchers in the US, Canada, and Japan territories. MLB stated this represents the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic contest averaged over 27 million audience members on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It also is the top-rated Fall Classic game since the 2017 final game between the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07M. This marks a 16% improvement over the previous finale featuring the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 ranked 7th, Game 5 came in eighth, and the third game landed in 13th position.
Global Viewership Figures
In Canada, the game drew over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English-language broadcast in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game started at 9 PM local time, it drew 12 million. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – drew over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Patterns
The full seven-game World Series drew 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership increases for two straight seasons.
Including the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the total US average was 16.1M. The total Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels drew 8.09M watchers, an 8% increase compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason ratings since 2017.
MLB stated that the World Series was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in 16 different tongues.
