MIAMI — Baseball fans have unquestionably embraced the World Baseball Classic, as the latest viewership figures from the knockout round attest in historic fashion.
After Fox Sports posted an overall viewership record during the pool-play round and set a single-game WBC audience record with a U.S.-Mexico contest, Sunday night’s semifinal win by the U.S. over the Dominican Republic averaged 7.37 million viewers. That game on FS1 and Fox Deportes set another milestone as the most-watched WBC broadcast ever on any network in the event’s 20-year history, beating the prior mark of 5.02 million viewers from earlier this month by 47%.
The taut game, a 2–1 victory for the Americans, marked the most-watched sports event of the weekend—a busy period that included the end of college basketball conference championships, the March Madness selection show that hit a 12-year high with 6.4 million viewers, and golf’s Players Championship.
Notably, the WBC broadcast also went against The Oscars in Sunday primetime, with the awards ceremony falling 9% to an average of 17.9 million viewers.
Fox, meanwhile, averaged 4.3 million viewers for the U.S. team’s quarterfinal win over Canada last Friday—also setting a WBC audience record for that stage of the competition.
One Last Broadcast
Each of these WBC numbers, however, is set to be eclipsed as the U.S.-Venezuela title game on Tuesday will be shown on the main Fox broadcast network instead of FS1. That practice was used for some games with the U.S team., but not the semifinal clash against the Dominican Republic.
The elevated competitive stakes of the title game—and the presence of stars such as U.S. team captain Aaron Judge and Venezuela star Ronald Acuña Jr.—could see the broadcast push near or beyond 10 million in average viewership, and represent another lift for the sport during a month normally dominated by college basketball.
Viewership figures for Monday’s semifinal win by Venezuela over Italy and Tuesday’s championship game will be released later this week.
The WBC championship also carries the backdrop of Venezuela being a focal point of White House attention, the presence of thousands of Venezuelan natives living in the Miami area, and Judge professing his belief that the tournament is now “bigger and better than the World Series.”
