world series

If Canadian music sounds a little bit sadder over the next year, there’s a good reason: Across the country, fans are grappling with the heartbreak of a painful World Series loss. In Toronto, where fans of all stripes tuned in, the city is feeling the weight.

For one glorious week, the city became the epicenter of not just sports, but culture. As the Toronto Blue Jays played the Los Angeles Dodgers for baseball‘s biggest prize, the game emanated not just from the Rogers Centre, but homes, bars and even music venues.

It wasn’t just that Toronto was watching baseball. Baseball became part of the city’s cultural rhythm, blurring the lines between the game and the music that soundtracks it. In that moment, baseball became a mirror for Canadian culture — uniting generations, artists and genres around a team that felt bigger than the city it played for.

For bands who had shows on the night of the pivotal Game 7 on Saturday night (Nov. 1), they got creative — watching the game on an iPad onstage, as the Beaches did, or projecting it right behind them, like Born Ruffians.

At the Rogers Centre, artists became part of the texture of the game. Baseball collector and superfan Geddy Lee of Rush was a regular sight as he remained glued to his seat throughout the series, Arkells frontman Max Kerman joined a busker to sing Tragically Hip songs for patriotic fans, Justin Bieber brought his wife Hailey to catch the game from Los Angeles, decked out in a Bieber Blue Jays jersey (for pitcher Shane Bieber, not Justin).

Even Drake, who is famously associated with the Toronto Raptors, jumped from his typical courtside spot at the Scotiabank Arena to a private box at Rogers Centre to watch Games 1, 6 and 7 of the World Series. At the OVO-presented Vybz Kartel concert in Toronto, the Jamaican dancehall star donned a custom Blue Jays jersey.

Where countless rappers drop bars about Steph Curry, Kobe Bryant or Allen Iverson, baseball’s cultural currency often feels as timeless as the game itself. Songs associated with baseball tend to date back four decades, if not 10, and reference players from a century ago: more Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio than Shohei Ohtani and Vladimir Guerrero Jr..

That might change now. From Vladdy’s “born ready” swagger to Ernie Clement’s power of friendship, the 2025 Blue Jays were full of lovable characters and storylines to latch onto. The demographics of baseball are also changing.

While basketball touts the game going global, baseball has been there and continues to spread far and wide across the world. This series had impact players from Canada, the United States, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Mexico and more, while Dodgers players like Ohtani, Roki Sasaki and Yoshinobu Yamamoto have become cultural icons in their homeland of Japan. The Major League Baseball season began with a game in Japan and finished in Canada, the first time it’s ever started and finished outside of the U.S.

That sense of global reach — and the music and celebrity culture intertwined with it — is no accident. Uzma Rawn Dowler, Chief Marketing Officer of Major League Baseball, says the league has been intentionally weaving music into the fabric of the game.

“Music is such a staple in baseball,” says Dowler in an interview with Billboard Canada during Game 6 at the Rogers Centre in Toronto. “We have our player walk-up songs, but we’ve also found that music is a passion point for our young and diverse fans.”

That approach also extends to creating moments that feel authentic to each city. “We want to make sure we’re relevant to the market,” Dowler says. “Here in Toronto, we had Drake for Game 1 — and he was back for Game 6 [and then 7]. In Tokyo, for our opening game with the Dodgers and the Cubs, we had music acts that were relevant to that market.”

Dowler’s strategy — to make baseball feel as musically and culturally relevant as any other sport — is reflected on the field too.

“If you go in one of our clubhouses and you listen to the playlist, you’re going to hear every different type of music,” says EJ Aguado, Vice President of Player Engagement and Celebrity Relations at Major League Baseball. “You’re going to see and hear guys from all different walks of life, so many guys from different countries. You’re going to see that too with how different celebrities and artists show up here. It’s going to appeal to a bunch of different people and I think that’s just representative of our game.”

Asked about what he listens to to pump him up for games, former Toronto Blue Jay and current Los Angeles Dodger Teoscar Hernández told Billboard Canada he keeps the tempo low.

“For me, it’s more relax time,” he said. “I listen to a lot of Christian music. That’s what makes my mind and my head calm so I can be ready for the game.”

For his part, Blue Jay shortstop-turned-second baseman Bo Bichette said “I’m a huge [Justin] Bieber fan.” He loved seeing the Canadian star singer in L.A. supporting the Jays.

Players each had their own walkup music, which ran the gamut from System of a Down’s heavy rock song “B.Y.O.B” (Addison Barger) to Chappell Roan’s “Pink Pony Club” (Davis Schneider). Guerrero tends to use songs by Latin trap and reggaetón artist Eladio Carrión, who appeared at games in L.A., while Alejandro Kirk uses regional Mexican songs by artist Xavi. Ironically, the biggest Canadian tune was used by a Dodger, with Ohtani walking up to Michael Bublé’s version of “Feeling Good” — something that gave diehard Jays fan Bublé mixed feelings.

You could feel the city, and the country, coming together to unite fans of all ages, and that was reflected in its soundtrack too. The Weeknd collaborated with the Blue Jays for exclusive merch, while Abel Tesfaye narrated a hype-up video for Rogers Sportsnet. A rerecorded version of Queen’s “I Want It All” with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra became the team’s rallying cry.

This season, Scarborough artist Azeem Haq teamed up with rapper Choclair for a new version of the Blue Jays’ classic seventh inning stretch theme song “OK Blue Jays.” During the playoffs, the song was played on Sportsnet and trended on Instagram reels as fans used the song to cheer on the team. The song, which plays off the 1993 World Series-referencing line “like Carter did to Philly” from Choclair’s 1990 CanCon hit “Let’s Ride,” references every era of the Blue Jays and all of their playoff theatrics.

Haq tells Billboard Canada he was actually at the ’92 and ’93 World Series where the Blue Jays won back-to-back championships, attending the games with his uncle and father, and now he’s happy to bring the fandom into the new era for his four nephews, who all appear on the track. “It’s a generational thing,” he says. “My dad handed the love down to me, I’m handing it down to my nephews.”

This time around, political statements didn’t capture conversation the same way as they did for the NHL’s Four Nations tournament that pitted Canada and the United States against each other during a tense time of international relations earlier this year. There was notable backlash to singers changing the lyrics to “O Canada” before World Series games — JP Saxe singing “home on native land” (first sung by Jully Black) and Rufus Wainwright borrowing the “that only us command” line first used by Chantal Kreviazuk in that earlier hockey tournament.

There was also fan backlash to a Game 2 performance by Jonas Brothers, who played a song following a touching Stand Up To Cancer segment between innings. Where the halftime performance is an integral part of the Super Bowl, MLB games don’t have as natural a mid-game music segment (though for her part, Dowler says the amount of time between innings was the same as previous tributes; they just went to Jonas Brothers instead of a commercial).

Still, there was a concerted effort to bring star power to the series. In L.A., celebrities like Brad Pitt and Sydney Sweeney showed up to the game, while Toronto set up a red carpet-like photo op with the Commissioner’s Trophy for celebrities like P.K. Subban, Jerry O’Connell and Vampire Diaries‘ Paul Wesley to pose with. In Toronto, Pharrell Williams opened the series with gospel group Voices of Fire for a flashy version of the American national anthem.

Even amid the heartbreak, something shifted. Baseball, often seen as the slower, quieter sport, suddenly felt alive in the country’s cultural bloodstream. In Toronto, it felt like one of the biggest moments of collective pride and energy since the 2019 Toronto Raptors championship — something the city has been begging for since the pandemic.

Game 7 of the 2025 World Series was reportedly the most watched baseball game since 2017, garnering 5 million more viewers than Game 7 of this year’s NBA Finals. It feels like baseball is more culturally relevant than ever, and the nail-biting Blue Jays-Dodgers World Series was a major part of that.

“I think we’re in the middle of the crest of the wave right now,” Dowler says, speaking about the worldwide cultural resonance of the sport. “This should not be unexpected for baseball anymore. This is what fans should expect from MLB — and that’s what we’re really, really excited about.”

“It’s great to bring music artists out here and show that the biggest stars are at baseball’s biggest stage,” says Aguado, noting that the celebrity calls they make are to real baseball fans, not just recognizable names. “This is the centre stage of the sports universe right now and we have the biggest and brightest on the field and off the field here in one place.”

For four games during the World Series, that place was Toronto. It ended with a gutting result, but it reignited a passion for baseball that will outlive 2025 — and might even spawn a few new Blue Jays anthems.

This article was originally published by Billboard Canada.