Additional than 1 million fans attended incredibly 1st-round games, shattering prior record

Fans have come out in droves to assistance the 2023 Planet Baseball Classic. (Photo by Chris Coduto/Getty Images)

If you gather the most talented baseball players from all about the planet and pit their nations against just about every other in a do-or-die tournament, they will come. OK, so it could possibly not be as catchy as the popular “Field of Dreams” quote, but baseball fans came out in droves to assistance the Planet Baseball Classic this year.

Additional than 1 million fans attended incredibly 1st-round games, according to MLB. The incredibly 1st round of games drew 1,010,999 fans, generating it the highest attended round in WBC history. That figure shattered the prior record for attendance, which was 510,056. That quantity was set in the course of the 2017 tournament.

Fans at the Tokyo Dome in Japan have been the most excited about the occasion. The round 1 games held at the Tokyo Dome set the record for most fans at a venue for a single round of the tournament with 361,976 and the highest common attendance ever in the incredibly 1st or second round with 36,198 fans per game.

The United States also saw a substantial boost in attendance. In Miami, 295,850 fans came out to watch Pool D games, a record for the most-attended WBC games in the U.S. The Mexico-USA game at Chase Field set the record for most attended incredibly 1st-round WBC game with 47,534 fans.

Viewership was up as appropriately. The Japan-Korea game drew a 44.4 rating in Japan. That figure received a bigger rating than any sport featured in the course of the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. Taiwan, Puerto Rico, Korea and the Dominican Republic all saw considerable increases in viewership numbers for the 2023 WBC.

In addition to all that, fans presently broke the record for most WBC merchandise sold. A thing purchased in the course of the quarterfinals, which begins Friday, will add to that record, which, like all the issues else connected with the 2023 Planet Baseball Classic, is presumably on pace to be shattered.