World Baseball Classic
Worldwide · Est. 2005
About World Baseball Classic
The World Baseball Classic (WBC), also referred to as the Classic, is an international baseball tournament sanctioned by the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC), the sport's global governing body, and organized by World Baseball Classic Inc., a partnership of the WBSC with Major League Baseball (MLB) and Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA). The winning team is awarded the World Baseball Classic Championship Trophy. It is one of the two main senior baseball tournaments sanctioned by the WBSC, alongside the WBSC Premier12, but is the only one to grant the winner the title of "world champion".
The tournament, proposed in 2005 by MLB and its Players Association, was first held in 2006 as an invitational event. It previously coexisted with Olympic baseball (until 2008) and the Baseball World Cup (until 2011) as tournaments sanctioned by the International Baseball Federation, the predecessor to the WBSC. The Baseball World Cup was discontinued after the 2011 edition, when the WBSC accepted an MLB suggestion to make the WBC the officially-sanctioned world championship, on the condition that the Classic should have direct qualifications and follow international anti-doping rules.
After a three-year gap between the first two installments of the tournament, plans were made for the World Baseball Classic to be repeated every four years following the 2009 event. The third installment of the Classic was held in 2013, and the fourth was held in 2017. The World Baseball Classic was held five times from 2006 to 2023, with Japan, the Dominican Republic, and the United States winning the championship. Japan, as of the 2023 tournament, is the only team to win the tournament multiple times.
The tournament is the first of its kind to have national teams featuring professional players from the top-level major leagues around the world, including Major League Baseball and Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB). In addition to providing a format for the best baseball players in the world to compete against one another while representing their home countries, the World Baseball Classic was created in order to further promote the game around the globe. As of the 2023 World Baseball Classic, the tournament is one of the most viewed sporting events in the world.