The thrilling extra-inning contest where the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a total 51 million watchers in the US, Canadian, and Japan markets. MLB reported this marks the most-watched World Series Game 7 after the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Details
The Saturday memorable contest secured over 27 million viewers on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched World Series game since the 2017 Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a 16% improvement over the last finale featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked 4th, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game came in 8th, and the third game finished in 13th place.
International Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game drew 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English-language program in the country after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest began at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – drew 13.1 million spectators, making it the most-watched World Series game on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Overall Averages and Trends
The entire seven-game series averaged 15.71M viewers on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen audience increases for two straight years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total US viewership was over 16 million. The total World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1M in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million viewers, an 8% rise over last year and Fox’s strongest playoff performance since the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 nations and regions by 44 media partners in sixteen different languages.
