Hell hath no fury like a baseball nation scorned.

Minutes after Japan fell to Venezuela in the World Baseball Classic semifinals, thousands of Japanese fans took to social media with a unified message: cancel Netflix.

You read that right. Not just anger at the loss. Not just disappointment in their defending champions getting eliminated. But an organized call to hit Netflix where it hurts - their subscription numbers.

Here's what happened: Netflix invested approximately $100 million to secure exclusive broadcasting rights for WBC games in Japan, Newsweek reports. They weren't just streaming the games - they barred bars and other public places from showing Samurai Japan matches. If you wanted to watch, you needed a Netflix subscription. Period.

That's a bold strategy when your exclusive content is a single-elimination tournament and the home team is the defending champion.

To put this in perspective: the 2023 WBC final between Japan and the United States drew over 50 million Japanese viewers. That iconic moment when Shohei Ohtani struck out Mike Trout to win it all? The entire country was watching.

This year, Netflix had those kinds of numbers - until Japan lost.

Now, while Netflix was probably hoping Japanese fans would stick around to watch the heavyweight battle between Paul Skenes' United States and the powerhouse Dominican Republic squad, that doesn't seem to be the case. When your team goes home, so does your interest.

And here's the thing that really set fans off: those exclusive restrictions. Netflix didn't just want subscriptions - they wanted to control how people watched. No public viewing parties. No packed sports bars. Just individuals, alone, on their Netflix accounts.