The Los Angeles Dodgers and Toronto Blue Jays met in the 2025 World Series, and while the matchup was massive in the United States, its real impact stretched far beyond one country. Fans in Canada and Japan tuned in at historic levels, with Game 7 averaging 51.0 million combined viewers across the U.S., Canada, and Japan, the most-watched MLB game in 34 years, dating back to Game 7 of the 1991 World Series.
Across all seven games, the World Series averaged 34.0 million viewers in those three countries, the largest World Series audience since 1992 and a 19% increase from the previous year, underscoring how MLB’s international audience is no longer a side story but a central pillar of the product.
Why MLB Is Increasingly Focused on International Audiences
MLB has spent the past several years deliberately pushing beyond the U.S. to position baseball as a global entertainment property, not just an American league with a few international fans. Overseas markets are seen as key growth engines for both viewership and commercial partnerships, especially in baseball-obsessed countries like Japan and in emerging markets such as Canada, Mexico, and Korea.
The Tokyo Series is one of the clearest recent examples of that strategy in action. MLB opened the regular season in Japan with a high-profile matchup between the Dodgers and Cubs in a packed Tokyo Dome, then followed it with exhibition games against NPB powers, the Hanshin Tigers and Yomiuri Giants, to connect directly with local fans and Japanese baseball culture. The goal was not just to showcase American clubs, but to present MLB as part of a broader global baseball ecosystem.
Why the Dodgers–Blue Jays Series Drew International Attention
Dodgers–Blue Jays worked globally because it layered multiple storylines that resonated in different markets. The Dodgers entered as a super team headlined by Japanese megastars Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, along with fellow countryman Roki Sasaki, giving fans in Japan a direct rooting interest in every game. The Blue Jays, meanwhile, represented an entire country that had not seen a team in the World Series since 1993, turning Canada into a single, unified home market in a way U.S. teams cannot replicate.
Toronto’s side brought its own recognizable names: Vladimir Guerrero Jr., one of MLB’s most popular sluggers and a consistent top jersey seller, plus Bo Bichette and George Springer, who have long been featured faces of the franchise. That combination of global star power on one side and a long waiting national fan base on the other made this feel much bigger than a standard World Series matchup.
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The International Talent Pool Driving MLB’s Global Profile
The World Series’ international flavor was not incidental. MLB itself highlighted that the Dodgers and Blue Jays combined for 13 players born outside the United States, spanning eight countries and territories: Canada, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Japan, Mexico, Puerto Rico, South Korea, and Venezuela. That mix reflected the front offices’ conscious strategy to sign, develop, and market foreign stars who can carry the league’s brand into new markets.
On the Dodgers’ side, Japanese talent defined the narrative. Shohei Ohtani remained the sport’s most recognizable global star, while Yoshinobu Yamamoto emerged as the World Series MVP, and Roki Sasaki gave Los Angeles a third Japanese-born arm that further linked the franchise to Japan’s fan base. The Blue Jays countered with their own international headliners, including Guerrero Jr., whose popularity extends well beyond Canada, alongside Bichette and Springer, who helped anchor Toronto’s lineup and gave the team a recognizable core for viewers across multiple countries.
Media, Streaming, and MLB’s Reach Beyond North America
Distribution is the piece that turns international interest into real numbers. For the early games of the 2025 World Series, sports media coverage noted that TV audiences in Japan and Canada hit record or near-record levels, with Japan averaging around 10.7 million viewers and Canada around 6.8 million for the opening contests, both among the biggest baseball audiences those markets have ever seen. MLB’s own data showed that Game 1 averaged 32.6 million combined viewers across the U.S., Canada, and Japan, with a two-game combined average of 30.5 million, the strongest World Series opening across those three countries since at least 2016.
Game 7 then leveled up again, with 51 million combined viewers across the three nations, a figure widely noted as the largest MLB audience since Game 7 of the 1991 World Series. Canada and Japan both set new benchmarks: Canada averaged 8.1 million viewers for the series, with Game 7 reaching 11.6 million and ranking among the country’s biggest English-language broadcasts ever, while Japan averaged 9.7 million viewers for the series and 12.0 million for Game 7, massive numbers relative to its population.
Those audiences were made possible by a broad distribution map. In the U.S., the series aired on FOX and Fox Sports’ streaming platforms, as well as on Spanish-language networks Univision and Fox Deportes. Canadian fans watched primarily on Sportsnet and TVA Sports, while Japanese fans saw the games on national and satellite platforms, including NHK and J Sports, with MLB noting broadcasts in more than 200 countries and territories via dozens of media partners in multiple languages.
Why This Matters for MLB’s Future
Taken together, the 2025 Dodgers–Blue Jays World Series is a blueprint for how MLB can leverage star power, international rosters, and coordinated media distribution to drive global growth. MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred has repeatedly said he wants to get the league to 32 teams and has tied that goal to the end of his term in January 2029, putting expansion high on the league’s medium-term agenda. Vancouver has already entered that conversation, with Mayor Ken Sim backing efforts in April 2026 to explore a formal MLB expansion bid, building on the country-wide engagement seen during the Blue Jays’ run.
The latest World Series showed that when MLB stages the right matchup and makes it easy to watch, the audience will come, from Los Angeles and Toronto to Tokyo and beyond. The series delivered record-setting or near-record audiences across three distinct markets simultaneously and produced the largest three-country World Series audience since the early 1990s. If the league uses that momentum to shape future expansion decisions, schedule more international series, and deepen its broadcasting partnerships abroad, the 2025 Fall Classic could be remembered as the inflection point where MLB fully transitioned from a primarily American league into a truly global one.
