With Record Viewership, WBC Gets Star-Loaded Semifinal Showdown

MIAMI — The stage is now set for perhaps the most anticipated game in the World Baseball Classic’s 20-year history.

The U.S. team, having survived pool play and defeated Canada in the quarterfinals on Friday, will face the Dominican Republic Sunday night at loanDepot park in the WBC semifinals. The matchup will pit the U.S. squad, led by Aaron Judge and Sunday’s starting pitcher Paul Skenes, against a loaded Dominican Republic team that includes Juan Soto, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., and Fernando Tatis Jr., and has clubbed a tournament record-tying 14 home runs in five games.

The clash of the heavyweights marks a crescendo of an event that began with high expectations and has drawn record-setting viewership and attendance.

“What can we expect? An unreal environment, right?” said U.S. manager Mark DeRosa. “I expect it to be, like, one of the best games of all time. … It’s just going to be a spectacle.”

Defending Champions Are Out

The other WBC semifinal, scheduled for Monday night, will include Italy and Venezuela, with the latter country ousting defending champion Japan on Saturday in the quarterfinals. Japan, led in part by Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani, had been seen as a serious contender to repeat. But the Venezuela team rallied from an early deficit and pushed past a Japanese team that had won 11 straight WBC games and has now suffered its earliest elimination in event history. 

Their victory qualified Venezuela for the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. The WBC performance has also represented a meaningful lift for the country after U.S. military action there in January.  

“People have faith in us during ups and downs. They believe in us,” said Venezuela outfielder Ronald Acuña Jr., who normally stars for MLB’s Braves. “It’s great to give this joy to our country.”

Italy, meanwhile, continues to be a major story of the entire WBC. The club, still undefeated in the tournament, has upset a series of top teams, including the U.S., while continuing a series of notable WBC traditions, including players arriving at the ballpark in tailored suits and drinking espresso shots in the dugout after hitting home runs.

“The key was the [pool-play] victory against USA,” said Italy manager Francisco Cervelli. “Those guys beat one of the best teams in the world, best players in the world. Now they’re going to believe. I believe.”

More Big Numbers 

The WBC has continued to draw historic numbers, both in person and on television.

Fox Sports averaged 3.17 million viewers for the U.S. team’s four pool-play games, a record total for that stage of the competition and up 183% from the comparable figure in 2023. That followed an average audience of 5.02 million for the U.S. pool-play victory over Mexico that was the largest single-game viewership in WBC history. 

The network also set a milestone for last Wednesday’s pool-play game between Italy and Mexico, which helped determine the U.S. team’s berth in the quarterfinals, averaging 2 million viewers. That figure marked the most-watched WBC pool-play game ever not involving the U.S. team. 

The four pool-play sites totaled 1.374 million in attendance—more than each of the five prior iterations of the WBC in full. The Tokyo pool site posted an individual event record with a total draw of 365,272, while Houston’s Daikin Park set a U.S. pool-site record with a total attendance of 350,365.