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- WBC delivered record viewership for Fox earlier this year
- MLB commissioner wants regular schedule for WBC
- League’s broadcast deals expire in 2028
Major League Baseball (MLB) is pressing ahead with plans to bundle the media rights to the World Baseball Classic (WBC) into its wider broadcast contracts in a bid to capitalise on the growing popularity of international tournament competition, according to Sports Media Watch.
The WBC has been sold as a standalone property since it launched in 2006 as a response to baseball’s exclusion from the Olympic Games, with Fox airing the most recent iterations of the tournament.
The property has gone from strength to strength, with the 2026 edition delivering record viewing figures of 10.78 million for Venezuela’s triumph over the US in the final – more than average viewership for the five-game 2023 World Series. Overall, the tournament averaged 1.29 million across Fox’s main network and cable channels, a 156 per cent increase on 2023.
MLB’s domestic broadcast deals expire in 2028 and the league has made no secret of plans to centralise as many rights as possible to increase national revenues and adapt to a changing local rights marketplace impacted by the demise of regional sports networks (RSNs) in the US.
League commissioner Rob Manfred had indicated that including a ratings winner like the WBC into a marquee package would help it achieve that, but warned that a firm cadence would have to be established. Since it launched in 2006, the WBC has been held every three or four years, with no decision made yet on whether the next event will be held in 2029 or 2030. Broadcasters would need greater certainty if they were to invest significant amounts in the rights.
“Our broadcast partners were out in force at the WBC finals and I think this is going to be a piece of our national broadcasting agreements,” Manfred told The Dan Patrick Show. “Obviously to do that, it has to be on a regular schedule.”
MLB plans to negotiate its international deals concurrently with its domestic arrangements but it’s unclear whether the WBC and MLB will be bundled outside of the US – potentially as part of a global deal. The WBC has also become a target for streaming services, with Netflix securing this year’s WBC’s rights in Japan. The streamer confirmed live streams of all 47 games reached a total of 31.4 million viewers in the East Asian country, with the fixture between Japan and Australia drawing 17.9 million viewers.
Netflix became a domestic broadcast partner of MLB last year as part of three-year deals also agreed with NBC and ESPN. The new agreements are said to average nearly USS$800 million each year overall, with Netflix’s contract valued at US$50 million. The league also has rights deals with Apple, Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) and Fox, giving the competition a total of six partners ahead of its next rights cycle.
MLB’s next set of agreements are expected to include more inventory for broadcasters, including local games. The league’s in-house media division is producing local broadcasts for 15 franchises during the ongoing 2026 campaign, with the total increasing this year due to the collapse of contracts with Main Street Sports Group.
The increasing move towards streaming has caught the attention of federal regulators however, with Bloomberg reporting that the US Department of Justice (DOJ) will probe the baseball competition’s distribution model. The DOJ is already investigating the National Football League (NFL) on whether its broadcast contracts violate anticompetitive practices, forcing fans to pay too much in subscription fees to watch games.
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