The thrilling extended matchup where the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a combined 51M watchers across the United States, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball reported this marks the most-watched World Series Game 7 after the 1991 contest between the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s memorable game secured over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It also stands as the top-rated World Series matchup since the 2017 Game 7 between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a 16% increase compared to the last Game 7 between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game placed 4th, Game 4 ranked seventh, the fifth game was 8th, and Game 3 finished in 13th position.
Global Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English-language broadcast in Canada since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million viewers. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series MVP Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – drew 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a single network in Japan.
Overall Averages and Patterns
The full seven-match World Series averaged 15.71 million viewers on the Fox network, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen viewership growth for two straight seasons.
Including the opening game broadcast on Univision, the complete American average reached over 16 million. The overall World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09M watchers, an 8% increase compared to last year and the network’s best postseason ratings after 2017.
MLB announced that the World Series was televised in 203 countries and territories by 44 media partners in 16 different languages.
