The nail-biting extra-inning clash that saw the Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays by one run drew a combined 51 million watchers in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese markets. MLB announced this is the highest-rated World Series Game 7 after the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s memorable game drew over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It also is the top-rated World Series game after the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07M. This marks a 16% improvement compared to the last finale featuring the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked fourth, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 came in eighth, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth position.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the game recorded over 11 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English broadcast in the country since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it drew 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto allowed one run in six frames – averaged over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game series drew 15.71 million viewers on the Fox network, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen viewership growth for two straight years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the complete US viewership reached 16.1M. The overall World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09 million viewers, an 8% increase over last year and the network’s strongest postseason performance since 2017.
MLB reported that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 various languages.
