World Series Game 7 Captures Over 50 Million Audience Members In the United States, Canada and Japan Markets.
The nail-biting extra-inning contest that saw the Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run averaged a combined 51M watchers in the US, Canadian, and Japanese markets. MLB announced this represents the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 edition contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Details
The Saturday epic game drew 27.33 million audience members on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It also stands as the top-rated World Series matchup since the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a 16% increase compared to the last finale featuring the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed fourth, the fourth game ranked 7th, Game 5 was eighth, and Game 3 finished in 13th position.
International Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game drew 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English-language program in Canada since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game started at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12 million. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – averaged 13.1 million spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Overall Averages and Trends
The full seven-game series averaged 15.71 million viewers on Fox, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership increases for two straight years.
Including the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the total US average was over 16 million. The total Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09 million watchers, an 8% increase over the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason performance since the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the World Series was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in 16 various tongues.
