Venezuela¡¯s win over the United States didn¡¯t ?just deliver the World Baseball Classic¡¯s first new champion in a decade, it also delivered the biggest U.S. audience the tournament ?has ever seen.
Tuesday¡¯s title game ?from Miami ?averaged 10.78 million viewers ?across Fox, Fox Deportes, and streaming, setting a new event record, and ?peaked at 12.15 million as it tightened late.
The ?final number was a fitting cap to a tournament ?that kept raising ?its own bar. The championship broadcast finished 46% higher ?than the ?previous WBC record set just ?two days earlier, when the ?U.S. ?semifinal win over the Dominican Republic drew 7.37 million.
It wasn¡¯t just American games driving the surge, as ?Venezuela¡¯s semifinal win over Italy averaged 3.76 million viewers in the U.S., the most-watched WBC telecast ever that didn¡¯t feature Team USA.
Fox¡¯s overall ?tournament ?audience also increased, averaging ?1.29 million viewers across Fox, FS1 and ?FS2. This marked a 156% rise from the 2023 WBC, helped by a record 78 MLB All-Stars ?participating and a noticeably higher level of intensity from players, who treated the tournament more like a serious championship than an exhibition.
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