Ernie Clement of the Toronto Blue Jays hits a leadoff double against the Los Angeles Dodgers during the eighth inning of Game 7 of the World Series on Saturday.Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press
The Toronto Blue Jays fell just short of winning the World Series on Saturday night, but their crushing Game 7 defeat to the Los Angeles Dodgers was a big winner for the team’s corporate sibling Rogers Sports & Media, pulling in a whopping average audience of 10.9 million viewers on Sportsnet, CityTV, and the Sportsnet+ streaming service.
That made it the most-watched English-language broadcast on record outside of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, the company announced Monday afternoon, citing data from the ratings agency Numeris.
In total, 18.5 million viewers caught some part of the game.
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A peak audience of 14 million was tuned in around 11:38 p.m. (ET), when Ernie Clement came to bat in the bottom of the ninth inning with the bases loaded and two out, and the score tied 4-4. He flied out, sending the game into extra innings, which lasted another 40 minutes.
Only 1.2 million stuck around to watch the Dodgers celebrate during the postgame ceremonies after they won with a double-play in the bottom of the 11th.
The extraordinary viewership for the final game capped a record-setting World Series run for the network, with all seven games becoming the seven most-watched Blue Jays games ever. The lowest-rated game in the series, the epic 18-inning Game 3, averaged 5.8 million viewers across its almost seven-hour broadcast. Game 6 pulled in 9.4 million viewers on average.
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In total, the seven games pulled in an average audience of 7.5 million, with 23 million viewers – or about 56 per cent of the population of Canada – tuning in at some point.
The boffo ratings translated into a likely revenue windfall for Rogers, which not only had the benefit of 18 games featuring the Blue Jays during a time in the calendar when it is normally airing matchups exclusively between U.S. teams, but was able to charge ever-increasing rates for commercial airtime. Ad buyers had told The Globe that Rogers was asking about $200,000 for a 30-second spot for Game 7.
Audiences were attracted as well by Sportsnet producing its own postseason coverage, marking the first time that a Canadian broadcaster stepped up to the plate to do so.
In a press release on Monday announcing the Game 7 ratings, Rogers said that during primetime on Saturday night, 8-11 p.m. (ET), “programming on Rogers properties accounted for 85.6% of all TV tuning in Canada.” That includes the company’s broadcast of Hockey Night in Canada, which was carried on CBC-TV.
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The monster ratings were reflected across the border, where the game became the most-watched World Series match since 2017, with almost 26 million viewers on average across the Fox broadcast channel and the Fox Deportes and Fox Sports streaming services, according to the ratings agency Nielsen. Viewership for the U.S. broadcast also peaked between 11:30 and 11:45 p.m., with about 31.5 million tuned in. The ratings came as something of a surprise, since only one U.S. market – Los Angeles – had a team in the series for the first time since 1993.
Sportsnet’s stellar run was marred by a pair of ill-timed technical glitches that crashed the company’s Sportsnet+ app, including one during the seventh inning of Game 7, as the Jays were trying to hold on to a 4-2 lead. Users on social media and others who contacted The Globe and Mail reported that it lasted about 45 minutes, coming back shortly after the Dodgers had tied the game 4-4 in the top of the ninth.
That came after a similar outage in Game 4, which prompted fans to voice frustration on social media and noted that the company had announced a price increase during the summer of about 30 per cent for the service.
The outages were due to “an issue with a third-party vendor,” according to Sportsnet spokesperson Jason Jackson, in a statement to The Globe on Monday. He added that the outage was not related to network capacity.