More Fans Attended The World Baseball Classic Pool Play Games Than All 81 Oakland Athletics Home Games Last Season

This may not come as a shock to you, but people like to watch good baseball players. Nothing new here, but the fact that the WBC Pool Play games outdrew the entire home attendance for the Athletics AND Marlins is pretty wild. 81 home games for Oakland and Miami and they got outdrew by an exhibition tournament with roughly half the games played. Again, it's no shock that fans will FLOCK to a tournament where some of MLB's biggest stars are playing. That is why I thought the whole argument this week about "who cares about the WBC" was foolish. 

So you can't say people aren't interested, you can't say people aren't excited for these games. They are outdrawing a franchise's full season numbers, yes they may be the worst team in baseball but still, that is insane. This is GREAT for the game of baseball, people want to watch these games. Doesn't matter if it's Arizona, Miami, Japan, these buildings are packed. This also says a lot about the product of some MLB teams, we know the Marlins and A's openly aren't trying to win so it is no shock that they aren't drawing fans. But still, the fact that this tournament has outdrawn them for pool play is very impressive. 

They are shattering their attendance records from previous tournaments and I think that also has a lot to do with the big stars playing. Trout, Mookie, Mullins, Kyle Higashioka, people want to see these guys play. Let alone the stars on the other teams. The atmosphere and ambiance was incredible for mostly all these games, I will say that the USA - Great Britain game lacked some excitement from the crowd but that is kind of to be expected. Most of the other matchups were incredible and the numbers back that up. So you can't really say no one cares or no one is interested in it, because these parks are packed. Just look above at those numbers.