{"id":620794,"date":"2026-03-12T21:35:20","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T21:35:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/620794\/"},"modified":"2026-03-12T21:35:20","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T21:35:20","slug":"netflixs-exclusive-wbc-deal-in-japan-drawing-viewership-concerns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/620794\/","title":{"rendered":"Netflix’s exclusive WBC deal in Japan drawing viewership concerns"},"content":{"rendered":"

Netflix\u2019s exclusive deal to broadcast the World Baseball Classic in Japan is raising real questions about how many people in the country are actually watching, according to The Athletic\u2019s Sam Blum<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The streamer paid somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 million for exclusive broadcast rights to the tournament in Japan, which Blum notes is roughly three to five times what the rights cost in 2023. The appeal was obvious from Netflix\u2019s side. Japan\u2019s 2023 WBC run was a cultural event on a scale American sports rarely reach<\/a>, as nearly 100 million of the country\u2019s 125 million people watched at least some of it. Per the Sports Business Journal<\/a>, six of Japan\u2019s seven games averaged over 30 million viewers. Those numbers made Japan\u2019s rights among the most valuable properties MLB had to offer when it returned to the market, and Netflix moved aggressively<\/a> to secure them.<\/p>\n

The problem is that Japan is not the United States, and the subscription model that feels unremarkable here looks very different there. According to Blum, a December 2024 study by Asahi Shimbun put Netflix\u2019s subscriber base in Japan at roughly 10 million. A survey conducted by the Sports Management Research Institute at Sanno University found that only 4.9 percent of respondents said they signed up for Netflix because of the WBC, while 68 percent said they had no plans to sign up at all. Japanese fans are accustomed to watching their national team on free-to-air television, and the move to a subscription paywall \u2014 even at about $3 for the entire 47-game tournament \u2014 represents a cultural shift that not everyone is willing or able to make.<\/p>\n

For those without a subscription, watching with a crowd wasn\u2019t a straightforward alternative either. The Japan Times reported<\/a> before the tournament that bars and restaurants were uncertain about whether they could legally air the games under Netflix\u2019s terms of service, which prohibit commercial use. Netflix told Blum it wouldn\u2019t take action against businesses streaming on personal accounts, but the initial ambiguity was enough to cause confusion.<\/p>\n

\u201cWithout terrestrial coverage, the overall national excitement around the WBC may become more limited, which may reduce the tournament\u2019s mass appeal,\u201d Nobby Ito, executive advisor for Nippon Professional Baseball, told The Athletic.<\/p>\n

MLB\u2019s position is that the low cost and Netflix\u2019s 325-million-subscriber global footprint make this a net positive for access. But the survey data and reactions from Japanese fans and the media suggest the gap between what MLB believes it accomplished and what the audience actually experienced is real, and actual viewership numbers \u2014 which haven\u2019t been made public \u2014 are the only thing that will settle it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Netflix\u2019s exclusive deal to broadcast the World Baseball Classic in Japan is raising real questions about how many…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":620795,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2302],"tags":[5,2372,80081,2353,80082,2352,73615],"class_list":["post-620794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-npb","tag-baseball","tag-japan","tag-mlb-international-rights","tag-nippon-professional-baseball","tag-nobby-ito","tag-npb","tag-world-baseball-classic-2026"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116218359376179067","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620794","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=620794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/620795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=620794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=620794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=620794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}