The exciting extended contest that saw the Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a combined over 50 million viewers across the United States, Canadian, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball reported this is the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 edition contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday memorable game secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched Fall Classic game since the 2017 Game 7 between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew over 29 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the last finale featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 was seventh, Game 5 was 8th, and Game 3 landed in 13th position.
Global Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game drew over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English-language program in Canada after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest started at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – drew over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game series drew 15.71 million viewers on Fox, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience growth for two straight years.
Including the opening game broadcast on Univision, the total American viewership was over 16 million. The total Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged over 8 million viewers, an 8% increase over last year and the network’s strongest playoff ratings since 2017.
MLB reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen different tongues.
