It remains to be seen how long the good times will last, but so far World Baseball Classic viewership is living up to the highest expectations.
Monday’s United States-Mexico World Baseball Classic pool play game averaged 5.02 million viewers on FOX and Fox Deportes, marking the largest audience for any game in the history of the event (six editions dating back to 2006). The United States’ win, which peaked with 5.65 million in the 9 PM ET quarter-hour, edged the previous high of 4.97 million for the 2023 Japan-United States final on FS1 and Fox Deportes.
Given changes in Nielsen methodology — specifically the expansion of its out-of-home viewing sample and shift to a new methodology combining its traditional panel with “Big Data” from smart TVs and set-top boxes — it is likely that the 2023 final would still rank higher all things being equal. But that is the only past game that could have realistically drawn a larger audience.
This year’s World Baseball Classic already accounts for three of the top six audiences ever for the event, and while those rankings might shift if taking the aforementioned methodological changes into account, it should be noted that all-but-one of the other games in the top ten are from the knockout round — rather than pool play.
Largest World Baseball Classic audiences
Prior to this year, the record for a pool play game was 1.48 million for United States-Great Britain three years ago.
Monday’s game averaged an audience on par with last year’s League Championship Series games. The seven-game Mariners-Blue Jays ALCS averaged about five million viewers on FOX and FS1, and the four-game Brewers-Dodgers NLCS averaged 4.7 million on TNT Sports. (It should be noted that some individual games in those series delivered considerably larger audiences — including 9.0 million for Game 7 of the ALCS on FOX and Fox Deportes — with the averages dragged down by weekday matinees and NFL competition.)
After a surprising loss to Italy on Tuesday, the United States could be eliminated from the WBC as soon as Wednesday night, depending on the outcome of the Italy-Mexico game. Assuming the U.S. advances, there is no telling how much higher viewership could climb.
The strong numbers for the WBC are just the latest indication of a broad resurgence in baseball viewership. In addition to the WBC, ESPN’s Spring Training games this season posted an 84% increase in viewership to 531,000, led by a matchup between the Giants and the U.S. World Baseball Classic team on March 3 (677K).