{"id":619510,"date":"2026-03-12T03:08:18","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T03:08:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/619510\/"},"modified":"2026-03-12T03:08:18","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T03:08:18","slug":"world-baseball-classic-tops-five-million-mark-for-u-s-mexico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/619510\/","title":{"rendered":"World Baseball Classic tops five million mark for U.S.-Mexico"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n

Monday\u2019s 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\u2019 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.<\/p>\n

Given changes in Nielsen methodology \u2014 specifically the expansion of its out-of-home viewing sample and shift to a new methodology combining its traditional panel with \u201cBig Data\u201d from smart TVs and set-top boxes \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s 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 \u2014 rather than pool play.<\/p>\n

Largest World Baseball Classic audiences<\/p>\n

\"world<\/a><\/p>\n

Prior to this year, the record for a pool play game was 1.48 million for United States-Great Britain three years ago.<\/p>\n

Monday\u2019s game averaged an audience on par with last year\u2019s 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 \u2014 including 9.0 million for Game 7 of the ALCS on FOX and Fox Deportes \u2014 with the averages dragged down by weekday matinees and NFL competition.)<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The strong numbers for the WBC are just the latest indication of a broad resurgence in baseball viewership. In addition to the WBC, ESPN\u2019s 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).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It remains to be seen how long the good times will last, but so far World Baseball Classic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":619511,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2290],"tags":[5,19491,22105,79979],"class_list":["post-619510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-baseball","tag-baseball","tag-mlb-on-fox-sports","tag-mlb-ratings","tag-world-baseball-classic-ratings"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116214007442004313","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=619510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619510\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/619511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=619510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=619510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=619510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}