Two years ago Dodgers state become Japan team. Toronto Blue Jays – Team Canada.
When two teams collided This year's World Seriesratings skyrocketed.
World Series Game 7 decision drew a record 51 million viewers in the U.S., Canada and Japan, Major League Baseball said Wednesday, making it MLB's most-watched game since Game 7 of the 1991 World Series.
The series averaged 34 million viewers in three countries, the largest global audience for a World Series since 1992. The audience outside the US was the largest ever – even with other countries still to be counted.
In the U.S. alone, each game averaged 16.1 million viewers, up from last year, even though the New York Yankees dropped out and a Canadian team joined. (This year's series was a more dramatic seven games versus five last year, which helped.)
For the third year in a row and the fifth time in six years, the World Series had a higher rating than the NBA Finals—56% higher this year.
Strong World Series ratings and attendance up for the fourth year in a row underscore the risks owners will take if they blocked players the following winter and shut down the sport in search of a salary cap.
After the work stoppage that cost the league the end of the 1994 season and the start of the 1995 season, average attendance did not return to pre-strike levels until 2006. Attendance soon fell again as games typically exceeded three hours – the clock on the field decided that – and amid a pandemic.
Even with recent gains, attendance remains 10% below its 2007 peak.
The Atlanta Braves, despite missing the playoffs for the first time since 2017, announced Wednesday that 2025 revenue through Sept. 30 reached $671 million — up 10% from last year — and profit reached $36 million.
The Braves' earnings included $71 million from Battery, their approximate development that depends largely on the sale of three million tickets to Braves games each year. (As a publicly traded company, the Braves are required by law to release financial data; the Dodgers and most other teams do not.)
Los Angeles leads all U.S. television markets in World Series ratings, followed by San Diego, Seattle, St. Louis and Milwaukee, according to Fox.
Both the current and future homes of athletics—Sacramento and Las Vegas, respectively—ranked in the top 10.
In Japan, a country with a population one-third that of the United States, the World Series averaged 9.7 million viewers. In Canada, a country with a tenth the population of the United States, the series averaged 8.1 million viewers.
Canada's Game 7 broadcast was the most-watched of any English-language broadcast on record, excluding the 2010 Winter Olympics, which took place in Vancouver.
