World Series Game 7 Draws 51M Viewers In the United States, Canada and Japanese Markets.
The thrilling extended clash where the Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a combined 51M watchers across the US, Canadian, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball announced this represents the highest-rated Fall Classic finale since the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday memorable contest secured 27.33M audience members on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It also stands as the most-watched World Series matchup since the 2017 Game 7 between the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a 16% improvement compared to the previous finale between the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked 4th, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 was 8th, and Game 3 landed in 13th place.
International Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game drew 11.6M viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English-language program in Canada since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it drew 12 million. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six frames – drew over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-game World Series drew over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen audience increases for two consecutive seasons.
Including the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the complete US viewership reached 16.1 million. The overall Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09M watchers, an 8% increase compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest playoff ratings after 2017.
MLB stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen different tongues.
