The nail-biting extended contest where the Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays by one run drew a total over 50 million watchers in the US, Canadian, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball stated this represents the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
Last Saturday’s epic contest drew 27.33M audience members on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a 16% improvement over the last Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game placed fourth, the fourth game ranked seventh, Game 5 was eighth, and Game 3 finished in 13th place.
International Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English broadcast in Canada after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game began at 9 p.m. local time, it drew 12 million. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – averaged 13.1M spectators, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a single network in the country.
Overall Averages and Trends
The full seven-match World Series averaged 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen audience growth for two straight years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the total US average was 16.1M. The total Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09 million watchers, an eight percent rise compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason performance after 2017.
MLB reported that the World Series was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by 44 media partners in 16 different tongues.
