The nail-biting extended contest where the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays by one run drew a combined over 50 million watchers in the United States, Canada, and Japan territories. MLB reported this is the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 showdown between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic contest drew over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It also is the top-rated Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a 16% improvement compared to the previous Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game ranked 7th, the fifth game came in eighth, and Game 3 landed in 13th place.
International Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game averaged 11.6 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English program in Canada since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – recorded over 13 million spectators, making it the most-watched World Series game on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-match World Series recorded over 15.7 million audience members on Fox, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership growth for two straight seasons.
Counting the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the complete US viewership reached over 16 million. The overall Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09 million watchers, an 8% increase over last year and the network’s strongest postseason ratings since 2017.
MLB reported that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen various languages.
