Early viewership numbers for the World Baseball Classic suggest what anyone who watched a regular-season baseball game already guessed. The 2026 version of Team USA is better than any of the talented players who took the MLB field last year.
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According to Sports Media Watch, Fox’s broadcast of full-play games between the United States and Brazil (averaging 2.64 million viewers) and the United States and United Kingdom (2.98 million viewers) would rank second and fourth, respectively, among all regular season games televised in 2025.
According to SMW’s Jon Lewis, only the June 7, 2025 game between the Yankees and Red Sox, which averaged 3 million viewers, did better with viewers than the US-UK game. For comparison, the World Series rematch between the Yankees and Dodgers on June 1, 2025 averaged 2.7 million viewers per Nielsen.
As Lewis noted, the first two rounds of the 2025 MLB postseason averaged 4.3 million viewers. The ALCS and NLCS averaged 5 million and 4.7 million viewers, respectively. These are the numbers the WBC will measure as the tournament progresses into the qualifying rounds.
The star power of Team USA, now led by Aaron Judge, Paul Skenes and Tarik Skubal, is delivering the viewership expectations. This is a good start for the WBC and its television partners.
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