I mean baseball is absolutely massive in Japan. Shohei Ohtani, Samurai Japan’s headliner, is the biggest celebrity in the entire country, and he’s playing with some other massive names in Japanese baseball.

I don’t think it’s hyperbole to think that this WBC might do better than the World Cup, at least in Japan.

Back in 2017, 25.4% of all households in Japan tuned into just the first round games (albeit that's the only info I could find in like 2 mins of googling). Now Japan has Ohtani playing for them again, and his stardom has only grown after he dominated MLB in '21 and '22.

If they make the finals, I could see viewership in Japan being even higher than the world cup. Afterall they have their Koshien tournament, which is a high school baseball tournament, that is basically as big as March Madness is in the states.

Easily will surpass the World Cup. Every day on tv here in Japan you can’t miss them talking about Ohtani and WBC. I would say well over 50% will watch the games.

Weird take. If anything “can” is an understatement, baseball is substantially more popular in Japan than soccer and their WBC games will likely eclipse those numbers. Especially if they advance further into the tournament but quite possibly the early games too.

The Koshien baseball tournament attracts millions and millions of viewers in Japan, it’s basically their March Madness and Super Bowl rolled into one event.

That’s a yearly high school tournament; this a national team event that hasn’t happened in six years and for the first time features the best Japanese player the sport has ever seen.

41.6% of Japanese households watched their first World Baseball Classic game. So swap out "can be" in that original statement for "is"

It did, 47%

46%. Eek