In a country of 41 million people, here is an astonishing statistic that highlights a shared viewing experience: Game 1 of the 2025 World Series was watched by an average of seven million Canadians. That’s more than one-sixth of the entire population of Canada.
Game 2 clocked in at 6.6 million viewers.
Per Sportsnet, the Canadian rights holder for all Blue Jays games, Game 1 of the 2025 World Series is now the most-watched Blue Jays game ever per average viewer. Game 2 ranks second.
It’s another marker for astounding viewership numbers in Canada this postseason for the Blue Jays: Toronto’s win over Seattle in Game 7 of the American League Championship series — highlighted by George Springer’s stunning three-run homer in the seventh inning — averaged six million viewers and peaked at 8.3 million.
What makes this World Series unique, as far as broadcast distribution, is that Canadians can watch the same home country broadcast during the postseason that they do during the regular season. That’s not something that exists for U.S. teams because the postseason rights are held by national outlets such as Fox, ESPN and TNT Sports. Since the Blue Jays are the only MLB team in Canada, their home television territory is the entire country.
Sportsnet is owned by Canadian media conglomerate Rogers Communications, which is also the parent company of the Blue Jays. The U.S. broadcast is also accessible to Canadians, especially those who live in cities relatively close to the border.
As an MLB spokesperson told The Athletic last month: “The international media deals are not competitive with Fox because Fox’s rights are for the U.S. only.”
The previous Blue Jays viewership high before this year’s World Series was Game 6 of the 2015 ALCS between the Blue Jays and the Kansas City Royals. That game averaged 5.1 million viewers.
During the regular season, Sportsnet averaged 906,800 viewers per game, up 51 percent over last season. They had 60 games that averaged more than 1 million viewers.
Sportsnet estimated that the first two games of the Series reached 15.9 million viewers. Reach measures the number of viewers tuning in for a couple of minutes as opposed to the entire average of the broadcast (which is the industry standard for measurement).
If the series somehow makes it to a Game 7, it will be interesting to see how close it comes to the 2010 Vancouver Olympics gold medal game in hockey. That broadcast, featuring Canada defeating the United States in overtime on Sidney Crosby’s golden goal, had an average viewership of 16.6 million and peaked at 26.5 million viewers.