• by Wayne Friedman , March 12, 2026

Growing interest in the competitive World Baseball Classic on Fox/Fox Deportes peaked on Monday when the U.S. beat rival Mexico in a “pool play” game.

The game produced 5.02 million Nielsen-measured viewers -- the highest-rated game ever for the sports event. This bested the final of the 2023 U.S.-Japan World Baseball Classic game which posted 4.97 million viewers.

The win against Mexico meant the U.S. will move onto the quarterfinals round.

This is the sixth edition of the two-week-long World Baseball Classic -- which features teams from 20 nations and runs in the pre-season time period before the start of Major League Baseball.

Two other games so far this year -- featuring the U.S. and Great Britain (2.98 million) and U.S. and Brazil (2.69 million) --- have earned top-ten results, among all the biggest WBC events ever aired.

The U.S. team lost to Italy on Tuesday in a surprising result, with a score of 8-6. Nielsen viewership numbers for the game were not available by press time.

On Fox so far, the WBC has earned a total of 1.44 billion impressions through the first seven days of the event, according to estimates from iSpot. In 2023, the last time the event was held, the games produced 971.3 million impressions over the first seven days.

Top paying advertisers this year include Budweiser, T-Mobile, Carnival, Michelob, Skittles, Kayak, and Cologuard.