World Baseball Classic Final Viewership: How many people watched the epic showdown between Team USA and Samurai Japan?

What was the World Baseball Classic Final viewership? Most people were probably watching as the United States tried to defend its title against world power Japan on Monday night.

According to Fox Sports, a whopping 5.2 million viewers tuned in to watch Mike Trout and company take on Shohei Ohtani and the Japanese side. It was reportedly the most-watched WBC game ever in the US.

Those metrics are only in the USA. Additionally, while the numbers combined for 5.2 million, the broadcast on FS1 alone had an average viewership of 4.5 million. In total, the three channels had 6.5 million US viewers watching around 10:30 pm EST.

For reference, this game of the WBC surpassed Game 5 of the NLCS last year. It was the game where the Philadelphia Phillies defeated the San Diego Padres to make it to the World Series.

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World Baseball Classic Final Viewership: Why everyone was watching

The World Baseball Classic Final viewership was so high for a couple of reasons. First, it was the final of the world tournament. Those are always watched by a lot of people.

Secondly, it featured arguably the two biggest baseball countries in the world. Thirdly, everyone wanted to see the stars match up. Both teams were very deep and have great players.

Mostly, though, fans were anxious to see if Los Angeles Angels teammates Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani would finally face off.

World Baseball Classic Final Viewership

In storybook fashion, they did and it got to a full count with two outs in the ninth with the USA trailing by one. Ohtani struck out his teammate for the win.