The thrilling extra-inning matchup where the Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a total 51 million spectators in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball stated this represents the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 edition showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday memorable game averaged 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and their digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It also is the top-rated World Series matchup since the 2017 final game involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07M. This represents a 16% improvement over the previous Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed fourth, Game 4 ranked 7th, the fifth game was eighth, and the third game finished in thirteenth position.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English-language program in Canada after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – averaged 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Overall Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-game World Series recorded over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded viewership growth for two straight years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the total American average reached over 16 million. The total Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09 million viewers, an eight percent increase compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest playoff performance since 2017.
MLB announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by 44 media partners in 16 different languages.