WBC semifinal shatters record despite airing on FS1 opposite Oscars

Airing on FS1 opposite the Academy Awards, the United States’ win in the World Baseball Classic semifinals delivered a milestone audience.

Sunday’s United States-Dominican Republic World Baseball Classic semifinal averaged 7.37 million viewers across FS1 (6.86M) and Fox Deportes (505K), marking easily the largest audience ever for the event. The previous high was 5.02 million for a United States-Mexico pool play game on the FOX broadcast network last Monday night.

The United States’ win, which peaked with 8.17 million viewers, more-than-tripled the team’s 2023 semifinal against Cuba (2.25M). (As might go without saying, that is well beyond the range that could be explained by Nielsen’s methodological changes of recent years.)

The game delivered one of the ten largest baseball audiences of the past year — trailing only the seven Dodgers-Blue Jays World Series games, Mariners-Blue Jays Game 7 in the ALCS (9.03M) and Tigers-Mariners Game 5 in the NLCS (8.73M). It surpassed last year’s MLB All-Star Game (7.2M), which is almost always the most-watched baseball game outside of postseason play.

On FS1 alone, the audience of 6.86 million ranks as the highest for any baseball game on cable since Game 7 of the 2023 NLCS on TBS (Diamondbacks-Phillies: 8.99M) and the largest on FS1 since Game 6 of the 2019 Yankees-Astros ALCS (7.47M).

The previous U.S. WBC game on FS1 was a far more ordinary draw, as their upset loss to Italy drew just under two million on the network last Tuesday, with the audience rising to 2.07 million including Fox Deportes.

Notably, the game was the most-watched sports program of Selection Sunday — and indeed the entire weekend — surpassing the NCAA men’s basketball tournament Selection Show on CBS. That is despite the Selection Show drawing its largest audience since 2014 (6.41M). Sunday featured a number of strong sports audiences that still fell notably short of the WBC game, including 4.72 million for the Purdue-Michigan Big Ten Tournament final and 4.4 million (including Adobe Analytics) for the final round of The PLAYERS Championship on NBC.

The previous U.S. game, a quarterfinal matchup with Canada on FOX last Friday night, averaged 4.3 million across FOX (4.14M) and Fox Deportes — up 70% from the United States-Venezuela quarterfinal in 2023 (2.52M). The U.S. win, which peaked with 4.93 million in the 10:45 PM ET quarter-hour, ranks fourth among all WBC games behind Sunday’s semifinal, the Mexico pool play game, and the 2023 Japan-U.S. final (4.97M).

As for non-U.S. games, viewership was not immediately available for Saturday’s Venezuela-Japan quarterfinal on FOX or Monday’s Venezuela-Italy semifinal on FS1. Last week’s Italy-Mexico game, which determined whether the U.S. would advance to the knockout stage, averaged 2.0 million across FS1 (1.7M) and Fox Deportes to rank as the most-watched non-U.S. pool play game on record. (Pending results for Monday’s game, the all-time high for a non-U.S. WBC game was 2.55 million for the 2023 Japan-Mexico semifinal.)