World Baseball Classic: Team USA’s semifinal win over Dominican Republic draws more viewers than 2025 MLB All-Star Game

Aaron Judge made waves on Monday in the wake of Team USA pulling out a thrilling, and controversial, 2-1 win over the Dominican Republic in the World Baseball Classic semifinals.

“The crowd here, the crowd we had when we played against Mexico, it’s bigger and better than the World Series,” said Judge, who notably launched a momentum-shifting and heat-seeking missile from right field to throw out Fernando Tatis Jr. in the third inning of Sunday’s triumph over Team D.R.

“The passion that these fans have to represent their country, to represent some of their favorite players, there’s nothing like it.” 

The TV ratings are in from that popcorn-worthy showdown, and while they aren’t bigger and better than the World Series’, they are record-breaking.

While playing for a spot in the WBC final, USA and the D.R. drew 7,369,000 viewers across FS1 and Fox Deportes, making that semifinal classic the most-watched WBC telecast all-time. More people watched it than last year’s MLB All-Star Game, which averaged 7.2 million viewers.

And that’s while the Oscars were airing. Actually, it was the most-watched sports event of a weekend, which included the NCAA men’s basketball tournament Selection Show on CBS.

Viewership peaked at 8.17 million from 11-11:08 p.m. ET on FS1, according to Fox Sports PR, as the game went down to the wire and featured incredible pitching from both sides.

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It started with reigning NL Cy Young Award winner Paul Skenes on the bump for the Americans and ended with closer Mason Miller delivering a slider that was outside the zone and questionably called strike three.

Team USA was powered by solo shots from Gunnar Henderson and Roman Anthony.

Viewership was up a whopping 252% compared to the Americans’ WBC semifinal win over Cuba in 2023 that attracted 1.95 million viewers on FS1.