Major League Baseball is enjoying a surge in viewership both in the United States and Japan, as the game as been enhanced with rule changes aimed at enhancing the pace of play for a better viewing experience. With more than two months of the 2025 season completed, national broadcasts on FOX, ESPN and TBS have all posted double-digit percentage gains in average viewership compared to last year.
Meanwhile, MLB games on Japan’s NHK and the league’s own streaming platform, MLB.TV, are also experiencing significant growth. The updated figures were released by Major League Baseball on Tuesday.
MLB on FOX is averaging 1.841 million viewers per game, an increase of 10% over last season. ESPN has seen even stronger gains, with a 22% rise to 1.740 million average viewers per game—the network’s best MLB performance through this point in the season since 2017. Despite ESPN and MLB going public about their upcoming rights agreement coming to an end following this season, Sunday Night Baseball on ESPN in particular has generated its most-watched season in eight years, since 2017, according to Nielsen. The franchise is averaging 1,719,000 viewers, up 16 percent from 2024. It is also up six percent from last year in the P18-49 demographic.
In addtion, the June 1 Sunday Night Baseball match up between the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees was the most-watched in seven years, since August 2018. The World Series rematch averaged 2,729,000 viewers and peaked with 3,085,000 viewers at 8:30 p.m. ET. The game broadcast was up 65 percent from last year’s comparable game and up 81 percent from the 2024 Sunday Night Baseball full season average.
TBS’s MLB Tuesday coverage is also hitting milestones, up 16% year-over-year and off to its best-ever start for regular season broadcasts. Notably, viewership among adults aged 18-34 has skyrocketed by 69% over last season.
Additionally, the MLB Network Showcase Game series has seen a 13% uptick in viewership overall, including a matching 13% boost in the key 18-34 demographic. Studio programming on MLB Network is also trending upward. MLB Central is up 3%, Intentional Talk has grown 7%, and Quick Pitch has improved 3% compared to 2024.
Internationally, Japan continues to demonstrate a strong appetite for Major League Baseball. Viewership across NHK channels is up 22%, averaging 2.7 million viewers per game. That figure excludes the season-opening Tokyo Series between the Chicago Cubs and Los Angeles Dodgers, which drew an average of 24 million viewers per game. NHK is on pace to deliver MLB’s most-watched regular season ever in Japan, marking the fifth consecutive year of growth since 2021.
Streaming numbers also underscore baseball’s momentum. MLB.TV has logged a 27% increase in viewership over 2024—which was previously the most-watched season in the service’s history. Through games played on Monday, June 2, fans have consumed more than 7.5 billion minutes of MLB.TV content.
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