Featuring a Canadian team and airing on the least-watched night of the week, an all-time classic Game 7 of the World Series nonetheless drew a massive U.S. television audience.
Saturday’s Dodgers-Blue Jays World Series Game 7 averaged 25.98 million viewers across Fox Sports platforms, including 25.45 million on FOX, per Nielsen panel-only fast-nationals and Adobe Analytics — marking the largest Major League Baseball audience since Game 7 of the 2017 Astros-Dodgers Fall Classic (28.29M). Figures are likely to rise higher when the final nationals, which include “Big Data” from smart TVs and set-top boxes, are released Tuesday.
The Dodgers’ extra-inning win, which peaked with 31.54 million in the 11:30 PM ET quarter-hour, surpassed the previous World Series Game 7 in 2019, Nationals-Astros. That game averaged 23.19 million, though it should be noted that Nielsen did not start including out-of-home viewing in its national estimates until the following year. (All things being equal, it is entirely possible the 2019 game would rank higher.)
The first Saturday World Series Game 7 since 1931, Dodgers-Blue Jays delivered the largest Saturday live sports audience — excluding the NFL and the Olympics — since the Yankees clinched the 1996 World Series against the Braves in front of a FOX audience of 30.44 million. Given the changes in Nielsen methodology over the years, games like Indians-Marlins Game 6 in 1997 (23.7M), Yankees-Diamondbacks Game 6 in 2001 (22.7M), Marlins-Yankees Game 6 in 2003 (23.2M) or Cardinals-Red Sox Game 1 in 2004 (23.2M) would likely rank higher all things being equal, but one is still talking about a 20+ year high.
In the past 20 years, the most-watched Saturday baseball game prior to Game 7 was Indians-Cubs Game 4 in 2016 with 16.7 million.
As Saturdays are the least-watched night of the week, it is rare to see a sporting event of such magnitude scheduled for the night. The only marquee, championship level event that regularly airs on a Saturday night is the NCAA men’s basketball national semifinals, none of which have ever averaged as large an audience as the across-all-platforms figure for Game 7.
No sport is more associated with Saturday than college football, but the last college football game to draw a bigger Saturday audience was more than 30 years ago — the 1994 Florida State-Nebraska Orange Bowl, a national championship that took place on New Year’s Day. The most-watched regular season Saturday game, the 1993 Florida State-Notre Dame “Game of the Century,” averaged 22.0 million. (College football of course cannibalizes itself with numerous competing games across multiple networks.)
Not counting international events like the Olympics, Game 7 delivered easily the largest U.S. audience for a sporting event involving a Canadian team since Game 6 of the 1993 World Series, which the Blue Jays won to clinch a second-straight title (29.05M).
All historical comparisons come with the obvious caveats regarding Nielsen methodological changes.
Figures for the Canadian broadcast on SportsNet were not immediately available, but it seems fairly likely that the combined U.S. and Canadian figure will approach the audience for Game 7 of the 2016 World Series won by the Cubs.
