The exciting extra-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate 51 million viewers in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. MLB announced this represents the highest-rated World Series Game 7 since the 1991 showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Details
Last Saturday’s epic game drew 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It also is the top-rated Fall Classic game since the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew over 29 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement compared to the previous Game 7 between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked fourth, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game came in eighth, and Game 3 finished in 13th place.
International Viewership Figures
In Canada, the climactic game recorded 11.6 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English-language broadcast in Canada after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – drew over 13 million spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game World Series averaged 15.71 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen audience growth for two straight seasons.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total US viewership reached 16.1 million. The overall Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million viewers, an 8% rise compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason ratings since 2017.
MLB stated that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 countries and territories by 44 media partners in sixteen different languages.
