The thrilling extra-inning contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a aggregate over 50 million watchers in the US, Canadian, and Japanese territories. MLB reported this is the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 contest between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Details
The Saturday epic contest drew over 27 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 edition final game between the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement compared to the previous finale between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed 4th, Game 4 was 7th, the fifth game was eighth, and the third game finished in 13th place.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game drew 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English broadcast in Canada after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series MVP Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – averaged 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Patterns
The full seven-game World Series drew over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded viewership growth for two consecutive seasons.
Including the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the complete American viewership reached over 16 million. The total Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels drew 8.09M viewers, an eight percent increase over the previous year and the network’s best playoff ratings since 2017.
MLB reported that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen different languages.
