The nail-biting 11-inning matchup that saw the Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run drew a aggregate 51M watchers across the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. MLB reported this represents the highest-rated World Series Game 7 after the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s memorable game drew 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It additionally is the most-watched World Series matchup since the 2017 final game involving the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the last finale between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked fourth, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game was eighth, and the third game finished in thirteenth position.
International Audience Figures
In Canada, the climactic game drew over 11 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English-language program in the country after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it drew 12 million. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – drew over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Series Totals and Trends
The full seven-match World Series recorded 15.71M audience members on Fox, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen viewership growth for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the total American viewership reached 16.1M. 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 and its sister channels drew 8.09 million watchers, an eight percent increase over the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason ratings after 2017.
MLB announced that the World Series was televised in over 200 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen various languages.
