I was in New York on Tuesday night, meeting a source in Midtown for a burger and a beer. The two TVs behind the bar were showing the Knicks crushing the Pacers at MSG, but around 8 p.m., something strange happened. The bar’s manager switched both TVs over to the first pitch of the World Baseball Classic’s championship game between the U.S. and Venezuela. Stranger still: No one complained.

The World Baseball Classic has been around since 2006—first concocted as a preseason tournament of glorified exhibition games featuring MLB athletes playing their way back into shape under the banners of their countries of origin. Some big names inevitably opted out, and all pitchers were on strict pitch counts to avoid serious injury with the real 162-game season just over the horizon. Ratings were mid at best.

Despite those humble origins, the tournament survived, steadily earning a little more respectability with each iteration. Then, three years ago, it fully entered the American sports zeitgeist. When Shohei Ohtani struck out his Anaheim Angels teammate Mike Trout in the final at bat of the 2023 tournament, it was clear that the WBC would never be the same.

Coming on the heels of the Winter Olympics and recent hockey and basketball all-star formats that have shamelessly tapped into viewers’ feeling of national pride, this year’s WBC clicked. More than 1.6 million fans attended this year’s games, a 24 percent jump from the last tournament in 2023. Attendees packed stadiums in Miami, Houston, Tokyo, and San Juan and sprinkled social media with game-related content. The atmosphere even had an excitable Team U.S.A. captain Aaron Judge comparing it to the World Series. (Derek Jeter, ever the stoic, begged to differ on the Fox broadcast.) The final, a geopolitically loaded contest between the U.S. and Venezuela had world-class pitching throughout, and a ninth-inning, walk-off double from Eugenio Suárez, who currently plays for the Reds. What’s more, it was a bona fide TV draw, finishing with 10.784 million viewers, comparable to some World Series games. Even more notable: Audiences had been tuning in all along. Sunday’s U.S.–Dominican Republic matchup drew more than 7 million viewers in the U.S.—even though it was carried on Fox’s cable channels FS1 and Fox Deportes and competed directly against the Academy Awards. That semifinal marked FS1’s biggest audience in the past seven years, and the WBC’s biggest-ever single-game audience—a record broken two days later.

As the tournament has gone from global curiosity to big deal, the league and its various partners have started to see the possibilities for greater revenue opportunities ahead. In other words, it’s time to start messing with it. Media executives have discussed the possibility of holding the tournament more frequently—every other year, for instance, rather than every three years, as it’s been slated since 2017. Organizers could end up moving the tournament to the all-star break, as the NHL’s 4 Nations Face-Off did last year. In an AP interview right after the tournament, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred seemed to suggest that such a move could happen.

There are reasons for doubt, however. A two-year timeframe would place the next WBC just before the Olympics—and Manfred has been optimistic that MLB players would participate in the 2028 Games, which are being hosted by Los Angeles. A midseason move seems just as unlikely—it would take a lot for MLB to accommodate a two-week midseason break for the WBC. But the mere fact that these ideas have been floated shows how big an event the WBC has become.

That growth is coming at the perfect time for MLB, which is going to market with all of its media rights in 2028. Streamers and networks alike have made it clear that they are looking to invest in major events that cut through the content clutter, and baseball, almost by accident, now has such a product on its hands—though not without some caveats.

The World Baseball Classic is jointly owned by MLB and the players’ association, and it’s still an open question whether it will be folded into other packages that MLB wants to sell, or be sold on its own. The incumbent rights-holder, Fox, will likely want to hold on to it. (The broadcaster only bought the rights to this year’s WBC last October.) Then again, the WBC certainly fits into Netflix’s current sports strategy, which is centered on picking off big events, like the NFL Christmas games or one-off boxing matches. The rights fee for this year’s event hasn’t leaked yet, but considering Netflix paid more than $100 million for the WBC rights in Japan, you can bet the MLB made the most of the domestic rights as well. Of course, MLB and the MLBPA split most of the revenue, while global baseball organizations also take a small cut. And thanks largely to that Netflix deal, participating teams have seen their payouts more than double since 2023. Players on both the Venezuelan and U.S. teams each received $100,000 for making the championship, per a report from The Athletic’s Evan Drellich.

As almost every sports league looks to expand abroad, having a compelling global competition is key. In fact, the success of this year’s tournament follows a trend that can be seen in other U.S. leagues with international play. The final of the NHL’s 2025 4 Nations tournament drew 9.3 million U.S. viewers on ESPN and 5.7 million in Canada on Sportsnet—shockingly big numbers for hockey. The NBA’s USA vs. World all-star format resulted in an 87 percent viewership jump from last season. The 8.8 million viewers marked the All-Star Game’s biggest audience in 15 years.

Now that the WBC has shown its true potential—in two consecutive and very different tournaments, three years apart—the sports media world is naturally clamoring for more. So the first question league, media, and sponsor executives have is: When is more coming?

On Stephen A.’s texting prowess: “Mike Foss was a great podcast guest. There was nothing better in that episode than learning that Stephen A. texts the same way he speaks.” —A fellow Terp

On the Netflix MLB deal in Japan: “I absolutely loved your story on Netflix’s ambitions in Japan. I hope to hear more about the sport-driven international streaming market.” —A Varsity subscriber

On the tournament: “If David Ellison is smart and divests many of the cable outlets, let’s say that Versant scoops them up. Might we see in 2027 or 2028 the first game in Round 1 of the NCAA tourney have a tip time of 11:45 a.m. Eastern?” —A Varsity subscriber

Have a great weekend. See you Monday.

John