The dramatic finish to the World Series drew baseballs largest TV audience in eight years.

Foxs broadcast of the Los Angeles Dodgers 11-inning, 5-4 victory over the Toronto Blue Jays in game seven of the World Series averaged 25.45 million viewers in preliminary Nielsen ratings (which include only the ratings services panel measurement); Fox Deportes and Fox Sports streaming added 530,000 more viewers. Final ratings, which will include Nielsens big data component and will be available Tuesday, could push the total higher. The game peaked at 31.54 million viewers from 11:30-11:45 p.m. ET.

The 25.98 million viewers for the game are the most for any World Series game (or any other Major League Baseball telecast) since game seven of the 2017 series brought in 28.24 million people. Saturdays telecast was 10 percent ahead of the last World Series game seven in 2019 (with the caveat that Nielsen didnt include out of home viewing before 2020).

Saturdays telecast currently ranks fifth among the eight World Series game sevens since 2001, pending updates. The Chicago Cubs 2016 win leads that group with more than 40 million viewers.

The first five games of the series averaged 12.52 million viewers on Fox; the game seven audience will lift that average to about 14.76 million (ratings for Fridays game six werent available at publication time). In Canada, the series has averaged about 7 million viewers per game through the first five.

The Dodgers won their second straight World Series, having dispatched the New York Yankees in five games last year. Catcher Will Smith hit the go-ahead home run in the top of the 11th inning, and series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto pitched the final 2 2/3 innings a day after going six innings as the game six starter.