MLB’s Global Push: Is Baseball Truly Becoming an International Sport?

Major league bseball has been making pushes abroad to grow the sport. With deep roots in countries like Japan, Korea, and the Dominican Republic, are their efforts enough?

International Reach

Major League Baseball hosted a handful of international games in the 2024 season, with a first ever Seoul Series, a return to Mexico City and Tokyo, and an immense pair of games in London. The latter hosted an incredible 110 thousand fans at London Stadium in their two game series.

More international tournaments!

In 2023, cities across Japan, Taiwan, and the USA hosted an unparalleled basdeball event: The World Baseball Classic (WBC).

Similar to 2025’s Four Nations Facing Off, the WBC featured an international baseball tournament. The World Baseball Softball Confederation ran the two-week event in partnership with MLB and the MLBPA.

With meaningful international play, the tournament drew in 5 million US viewers, and 60 million Japan viewers for the final game. The WBC is slated to return in 2026. Safe to say the Classic was… a home run!

FINAL: Japan 3, United States 2

Samurai Japan is the World Baseball Classic champion. We'll remember plenty, but nothing more than Shohei Ohtani vs. Mike Trout, which ended on a full-count slider that Trout swung through for strike three.

What a game. What a tournament.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) March 22, 2023

Baseball’s challenge…

The search for global outreach faces some difficulties. The main strain they struggle with is competition with other sports. With football dominating, well – the rest of the world, the ability to break into the scene is difficult.

With the youth’s attention span reducing, the length of games and breaks in play pose a challenge to grasping their attention.

Finally, a lack of local teams are another reason that international reach is lacking. Since there are only European major baseball leagues in the Netherlands and Italy, it becomes tough for the sport to grow.

The verdict

Although the sport has undeniably grown in other countries. The percentage of international players in the league has increased by 10% over the last 25 years.

However, they still need to do more. They can develop established academies, sign broadcasting deals, and continue their international series to reach more areas in Europe and Africa.