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.
Most-watched World Baseball Classic games
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).
FS1 dominated the night on television in the key young adult demographics, with the game and postgame ranking first and second in the key young adult demographics. The game itself trounced top non-baseball programs in 18-49 (1.46 to 0.48), 18-34 (1.05 to 0.36) and 25-54 (1.68 to 0.74).
The FS1 broadcast ranked third for the night in viewership, trailing only NBC’s “The Voice” (5.27M) and a re-run of “FBI” on CBS (4.71M). Keep in mind that while it is relatively common for sporting events to win the night in the young adult demographics, it is far less typical to win the night in overall viewership (where older-skewing broadcast TV and cable news fare have a distinct advantage).
Compared to the FOX broadcast network, FS1 easily outpaced both “911: Lone Star” and “Accused” in viewership and the key demos Tuesday.
(Nielsen estimates from ShowBuzz Daily 3.22)
