At 9 a.m. on a Sunday in Japan, the Los Angeles Dodgers began Game 7 of the 2025 World Series against Toronto. Millions of Japanese fans had good reason to tune in. Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto chased another championship, and by the time the Dodgers secured their 11th-inning victory, television figures were extraordinary.
An average of 12 million people watched in Japan alone, the equivalent of nearly 10% of the country’s 122.7 million residents. Canada contributed another 11.6 million, while the American audience reached 27.3 million. That brought the combined figure to 51 million viewers, the largest audience for an MLB game in 34 years.
Now the Tampa Bay Rays and Milwaukee Brewers have inherited baseball’s biggest stage. Neither team brings the particular international attractions that made last year’s series such a television event. No Canadian club, no Ohtani, and no Yamamoto. That makes this year’s championship an interesting test of just how international the World Series audience has become.
MLB certainly has the reach to do so. Last year’s Fall Classic was broadcast in 16 languages to 203 countries and territories by 44 media partners. But television availability and actual viewership are two quite different things. The overwhelming majority of the published audience figures came from the United States, Canada and Japan, leaving a considerable gap in what we know about the rest of the world.
One place to look for evidence of growing international interest is the World Baseball Classic, which produced some remarkable figures earlier this year. The tournament attracted 1.62 million spectators, 24% more than in 2023. Its final between Venezuela and the United States in Miami drew nearly 10.8 million American television viewers, the largest audience in the competition’s history. Average U.S. viewership across the tournament climbed from 506,000 in 2023 to 1.29 million, though more games on Fox’s main network helped drive the increase.
Japan offered another intriguing result. Netflix, which held exclusive Japanese streaming rights, reported 31.4 million cumulative viewing contacts across the tournament, a figure equivalent to more than a quarter of the country’s population. That does not mean 31.4 million different people watched, since Netflix’s measurement includes repeat viewing. More revealing was what they chose to watch: 55% of the audience followed at least one game that did not involve Japan.
Europe, where baseball has traditionally struggled to attract mainstream attention, provided some of the tournament’s more unexpected stories. Italy’s victory over the United States and subsequent run to the semifinals in Miami drew considerable coverage in a country where baseball usually gets a fraction of the attention soccer does. Italian broadcaster Rai carried the games, and manager Francisco Cervelli spoke enthusiastically about the late-night audiences. However, no independently verified nationwide viewing figures show how many Italians followed the team’s run.
In the Czech Republic, a country known for elite hockey players, the sport’s reach is more clearly indicated. According to Czech Television sports editor Jakub Stařík, one million people watched the country’s game against Japan during the 2023 World Baseball Classic. That is roughly 9% of the country’s 10.9 million residents, or nearly one in 11 people. He said many continued watching subsequent national-team games. For this year’s tournament, Czech Television acquired the rights to every game and aired 18 live broadcasts on its sports channel.
Those developments suggest that international baseball can reach viewers who might otherwise pay little attention to the sport. What remains uncertain is whether their enthusiasm for national teams translates into interest in MLB.
A Czech fan who watched his country face Japan in Tokyo might have little reason to follow the Brewers through a 162-game season. An Italian celebrating his team’s victory over the United States might not necessarily become a regular viewer of the Rays. The World Baseball Classic gives those audiences a national connection that the American professional game cannot automatically reproduce.
That distinction matters commercially. MLB has invested heavily in international expansion, and Commissioner Rob Manfred has identified the Classic as a key part of that effort. The challenge is turning occasional tournament viewers into an audience willing to follow baseball far beyond their own countries.
There are practical obstacles, too. According to MLB’s international broadcast listings, Sky Italia in Italy and O2 Sport in the Czech Republic carry the World Series, both subscription services. By contrast, the national teams reached viewers through public broadcasters. And when the Rays and Brewers take the field at 8 p.m. Eastern, it is 2 a.m. in Rome and Prague. Japanese viewers have a rather more convenient 9 a.m. start the following morning.
For an Italian or Czech fan, watching the World Baseball Classic meant cheering for their country. Watching Tampa Bay and Milwaukee means paying for access and staying awake well past midnight without that national connection. The tournament has demonstrated that baseball can draw enormous audiences in places where the sport has little tradition. Whether those people will rearrange their lives to watch two American clubs is a different proposition entirely. Once the international ratings are in, we’ll find out just how much of the world was really watching.