World Series Game 7 breaks TV viewership record, in overall good year for televised MLB games

Game 7 of the 2025 World Series averaged 51 million viewers across the United States, Canada and Japan on Saturday, making it the most-viewed baseball game since Game 7 of the 1991 World Series.

The 2025 World Series had a major international draw since the perennial powerhouse Los Angeles Dodgers, with their Japanese superstars Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, claimed the title over Canada’s lone MLB team, the Toronto Blue Jays.

The game averaged 27.33 million viewers across FOX platforms according to Nielsen, making it the second-highest watched broadcast in the US last week. The only network to average more viewers was CBS during the 4 p.m. Eastern window of Sunday football games.

Among the World Series’ recent Game 7’s, 2025 beat out both 2017 and 2019. 2017, which saw the Houston Astros claim the franchise’s first-ever title against the Dodgers, averaged 29.07 million viewers. 2019, which also featured a first-time champion with the Washington Nationals besting the Astros, averaged just 23.19 million.

Canada averaged 11.6 million viewers between SportsNet (English) and TVA Sports (French) throughout the matchup. It is Canada’s most-watched English broadcast since the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

Japan, which had the game start at 9 a.m. local time, averaged 13.1 million viewers. That made Game 7 the most-watched World Series game ever for a single network in Japan.

MLB's overall regular-season viewership also was up this year – exceeded last year's. ESPN, for example, reportedly averaged 1.8 million viewers, a 21% increase over 2024. 

The high viewership of the World Series also aligned with Hollywood’s worst weekend of 2025.

Halloween falling on a Friday plus the high-stress World Series matchup on Saturday led to the movie industry only seeing $49 million come in over Halloween weekend. More concerning for the film industry is that this flop of a weekend ends the lowest-grossing October in 27 years, not including 2020.

The box office grossed just $425 million domestically, the lowest since the $385 million in 1997. Those values are not inflation-adjusted.