Record finish for World Baseball Classic

If there was any doubt that the World Baseball Classic is here to stay, the record audience for Tuesday’s final should put that to rest.

Tuesday’s Japan-United States World Baseball Classic championship game averaged 4.48 million viewers on FS1 (4.97 million with Fox Deportes included), easily the largest audience in the history of the event. The previous high was 3.05 million for the 2017 U.S.-Puerto Rico final on MLB Network, ESPN and ESPN Deportes.

Four of the seven largest World Baseball Classic audiences ever took place in this year’s tournament, with the caveat that out-of-home viewing was not included in prior years.

Including postseason, Japan’s win outdrew all-but-one Major League Baseball game on FS1 last year. Game 4 of the Phillies-Padres NLCS averaged 4.88 million. The last regular season MLB game with a larger audience was the first “Field of Dreams” game two years ago, and outside of that no regular season game has had as many viewers since 2011 (Yankees-Red Sox: 4.72M).