The nail-biting extended clash that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a total 51M spectators in the United States, Canadian, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball announced this represents the highest-rated World Series Game 7 after the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s memorable contest secured 27.33M viewers on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It additionally is the most-watched Fall Classic game since the 2017 Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement compared to the last Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked fourth, the fourth game was 7th, the fifth game was 8th, and Game 3 finished in 13th place.
International Viewership Figures
In Canada, the game averaged over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English-language broadcast in the country since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it drew 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yamamoto allowed a single run in six frames – averaged 13.1 million spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Overall Averages and Patterns
The full seven-game World Series drew 15.71 million viewers on Fox, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This represents the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded viewership growth for two straight seasons.
Including the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the total US viewership was 16.1 million. The total World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09M viewers, an eight percent increase compared to last year and Fox’s best postseason ratings since 2017.
MLB stated that the World Series was televised in 203 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in 16 different languages.
