Fall Classic Game 7 Captures Over 50 Million Viewers In the US, Canadian and Japanese Markets.
The exciting extra-inning clash that saw the Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a combined 51M watchers across the United States, Canada, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball reported this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 contest between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s epic game averaged 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It also stands as the most-watched World Series matchup since the 2017 Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent increase over the previous finale featuring the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game ranked 7th, the fifth game was 8th, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth place.
International Audience Figures
In Canada, the game drew 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English-language program in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – averaged over 13 million spectators, making it the most-watched World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Overall Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game World Series drew 15.71M audience members on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded viewership increases for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the complete US average was over 16 million. The overall World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09M watchers, an 8% increase compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason ratings since the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen various languages.
