The WBC Was Just as Successful as It Needed to Be

The confetti has been swept up, the uniforms are in the wash, and the trophy is in storage. Yes, it’s true — the World Baseball Classic has finally wrapped up. It’s been a month of big story lines — from team Israel making a surprise run into the second round to Puerto Rico’s blondes-have-more-fun mentality causing the entire island to run out of blonde hair dye. And who could forget the USA taking their first crown following a stellar performance by Marcus Stroman?

With all of these headlines, it was easy to forget what this WBC meant. Previously, nobody had given a damn about the WBC in the United States. In 2013, domestic ratings took a huge hit as the games moved from ESPN to MLBN (despite drawing more viewers than the Olympics had in Japan). Attendance for the final rounds had also suffered in 2013, likely as a result of team USA failing to advance past the second round.

The WBC was a huge success overseas — but domestically, where the tournament was hosted and with arguably the largest audience for baseball, it seemed to be on the decline. Repeated mediocre performances by the hometown team didn’t help either — prior to the 2017 WBC, team USA had failed to advance to the championship round every single WBC.

This year looked to be little different. Pitchers and superstars alike skipped out on the WBC — notably Mike Trout, Bryce Harper, Justin Verlander, and others. Noah Syndergaard summed it up succinctly as to why so many players (himself included) decided to skip out on baseball’s biggest international competition: “ain’t nobody made it to the Hall of Fame or win a World Series playing in the WBC.”

Not to say that there weren’t stars on the team — Andrew McCutchen, Paul Goldschmidt, Adam Jones, and others are all fantastic players. But none of them quite had the impact of the stars that turned the WBC down.

And yet, here we are — playing without its biggest stars, team USA managed to take down giants of the sport such as Japan (a team that had never failed to make it to the championship round in the history of the WBC), and seek a small measure of revenge against Puerto Rico in the championship game for a tough-luck-loss in the second round.

Americans were entranced by the games — attendance and ratings records were shattered. MLBN, where the games were hosted in the U.S., drew 2.3 million viewers for the championship game — its second most viewers ever. The championship game also featured the second highest attendance ever for a WBC game — a game hosted in the United States.

As a result, most of the doubts about the WBC’s draw in the United States has been assuaged — baseball fans in America have finally embraced the tournament. Team USA bringing home a championship also helps in drawing more stars to the WBC (Mike Trout says he’s open for the 2021 edition of the tournament) which will, in turn, further bolster the popularity of the game domestically.

This WBC needed to silence the doubters about its popularity in the US of A. And it did just that. The WBC’s future looks bright, and it’s refreshing to know that baseball finally has a tournament that can at least compete in terms of caliber with other sports’ international competitions.