MLB swings at international, young baseball fans during record World Series

MLB is having a record postseason, and not just because Game 3 of the World Series went on for 18 innings.

Game 1 between the Toronto Blue Jays and the Los Angeles Dodgers averaged 32.6 million viewers in the US, Canada, and Japan, the largest combined audience from those countries since the 2016 World Series, according to MLB. Games 1 and 2 combined for an average of 19.8 million viewers in the US and Canada, up 27% from last year.

“Baseball is having a moment,” MLB CMO Uzma Rawn Dowler told Marketing Brew. “We are on fire right now, and it’s not just around the postseason, which has been incredibly electric.”

The energy around baseball—evident on social media, and probably in several of your group chats—comes in the wake of a push from the league to connect with younger and more diverse audiences through player and fan passions outside of the game itself, Rawn Dowler said.

Around the world

With Dodgers phenom pitcher and designated hitter Shohei Ohtani taking MLB by storm since joining in 2018, the league has been upping its presence in Japan, where baseball is incredibly popular. In 2023, the quarterfinals of the international World Baseball Classic tournament took place at the Tokyo Dome, and MLB started the 2025 season with a series there. Last season opened with games in nearby Seoul, South Korea, where the sport’s popularity is also on the rise.

The 2025 World Series just so happens to include 13 internationally born players—including Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and Roki Sasaki—which has contributed to viewership increases and helped to make the sport more “elevated on the global stage,” Rawn Dowler said.

Game 4 of the National League Championship Series (NLCS), during which Ohtani hit three home runs and struck out 10 batters, was the second most viewed LCS game of all time in Japan, according to MLB, and the following day was MLB’s third most-viewed single day on Instagram, bringing in 119.6 million views on Oct. 18.

The series was also the most-watched NLCS ever in Japan, with 7.34 million average viewers. Game 1 of the World Series, which began at 9am in Japan, is now the third most watched World Series game ever in the country, with an average of 11.8 million viewers.

With Ohtani and the Dodgers taking on the Blue Jays, Canadians also have a reason to engage with America’s national pastime. Games 1 and 2 were the two most-watched Blue Jays games ever on Sportsnet in Canada, reaching a combined 15.9 million viewers, per MLB; Game 1 alone was watched by “more than one-sixth of the entire population of Canada,” per the Athletic.

The increased international fandom has had big implications for league sponsorships, Rawn Dowler told us. Japan Airlines, for instance, started out as an MLB partner in Japan only, but has since expanded that relationship to include a US partnership, she said.

MLB team sponsorship revenue crossed the $2 billion mark this year, according to SponsorUnited, and TV advertisers are seeing boosted results in the MLB postseason: Postseason ads resulted in 24% more web traffic for brands than ads during the regular season, per data from TV ad-tech platform Tatari.

Out of the park

In addition to reaching an international audience, MLB has been taking steps to connect with younger fans by tying the sport to other passions like music, food, and fashion, Rawn Dowler said, something some individual teams have also highlighted in their social strategies.

Music in particular is “synonymous with baseball” thanks to player walk-up songs, she said, “and we found that our younger, more diverse fans are really interested in music.” As a result, the league has focused on creating more musical moments, like performances at the All-Star Game and a Tim McGraw pregame concert this summer. Most recently, Pharrell and the Jonas Brothers performed at Games 1 and 2 of the World Series, respectively.

While MLB is taking a swing at attracting new demographics, the league also has a core group of fans who are deeply entrenched in the history of the sport, and might not always embrace changes like mid-game performances.

To grow baseball’s fandom while also respecting its roots, Rawn Dowler said her team is trying to find cultural moments to engage with “in the right way that feel organic to baseball.” One way they’ve done so is by letting player passion points lead the way, she said: New York Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor is known for his fashion sense, and he recently appeared in a video discussing his style on MLB’s YouTube channel.

That kind of player storytelling can ideally translate to growth for MLB’s brand as a whole, and it provides more natural ways for baseball to work itself into cultural conversations, whether that’s on the public stage or just between friends.

“You can really tell when you’re infused in culture, in a moment, when you’re showing up in group chats,” she said. “MLB, the Dodgers, the Blue Jays, the World Series, the postseason, [are] all over group chats right now.”