The World Baseball Classic is becoming a very big deal.
At least, that’s what the viewership is saying. According to audience figures released by Fox on Tuesday evening, the United States’ first two pool play games set viewership records for the event. Team USA’s first pool play game of the WBC against Brazil on Friday night averaged 2.64 million viewers, a 78% increase versus the Americans’ only pool play game on Fox in 2023 (1.48 million viewers).
The next day, Fox topped that number for Team USA’s showdown with Great Britain, which averaged 2.98 million viewers, the most-watched WBC telecast ever, on any network, excluding the WBC Final. The 2023 finale between Japan and the United States averaged 4.48 million viewers.
The #WorldBaseballClassic on FOX is a hit as Team USA dominates in its first two outings of the tournament!
🇬🇧 at 🇺🇸: 2.98 Million Viewers
🇺🇸 at 🇧🇷: 2.64 Million ViewersThrough Sunday, average #WBC viewership is up +142% (across FOX, FS1 and FS2) over 2023. pic.twitter.com/fKyAdvQqIU
— FOX Sports PR (@FOXSportsPR) March 10, 2026
Per Fox, overall WBC viewership is up 142% across Fox, FS1, and FS2 versus the 2023 event.
As Jon Lewis of Sports Media Watch notes, last weekend’s games would both rank among the five most-watched MLB regular season games last year. However, the games fall well short of even early-round MLB postseason contests; audiences through the LDS round averaged 4.3 million viewers per game last season.
Of course, this year’s WBC has the added benefit of being measured in both the expanded out-of-home viewing and Big Data + Panel eras of Nielsen measurements. Both changes, made in February 2025 and September 2025 respectively, have generally served to increase viewership for live sports compared to prior years. This year’s figures versus 2023 far outweigh any increases that could be explained by the Nielsen changes alone, however.
The United States closes out pool play on Tuesday evening against Italy. With a win, the Americans would play a quarterfinal game in primetime on Fox this Friday.
About Drew Lerner
Drew Lerner is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and an aspiring cable subscriber. He previously covered sports media for Sports Media Watch. Future beat writer for the Oasis reunion tour.