The Korea Baseball Organization’s preseason is in full swing, with a May 5 start to its regular season (sans fans in attendance) on the calendar. The resumption of play in the KBO has attracted some attention from ESPN, it seems, but Jee-ho Yoo of South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reports that the media powerhouse sought to acquire broadcast rights from Korean media counterpart Eclat free of charge. Unsurprisingly, that was a non-starter in negotiations.
ESPN also floated the proposal of paying Eclat once it had secured a profit from KBO broadcasts, per the Yonhap report, but they’ve only been interested in month-to-month contracts that would allow them to drop KBO programming once MLB and other major domestic sporting entities resume play. According to Yoo, Eclat and the KBO felt “disrespected” by ESPN throughout their talks.
That said, it seems that ESPN isn’t the only foreign broadcast company interested in picking up the rights to KBO play. Daniel Kim of South Korea’s Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) tweets that KBO official Jin Hyung Lee tells him other networks have expressed interest in acquiring KBO television rights — including at least one non-U.S. network. (Kim speculates that Canada would make sense, which indeed seems plausible.) Perhaps, then, it’s possible for North American baseball fans to eventually find themselves with easy access to KBO play in the absence of Major League Baseball.
The Eleven Sports Network in Taiwan has already been streaming some games from the Chinese Professional Baseball League free of charge and with an English commentary team in place (which The Athletic’s Marc Carig recently profiled at length). That’s one option for sports-starved fans around the globe, but it seems Korean-based Eclat is understandably not enamored of taking on increased production costs and giving away its coverage of the larger KBO without compensation. The Korean league is on board with that thinking, as Yoo quotes a KBO official indicating that Eclat shouldn’t have to incur losses simply to air KBO games on ESPN.
The KBO season opener is still 12 days away, and the league is hopeful of being able to play an full 144-game schedule with a dramatic reduction of off-days and a heavy dose of doubleheaders to make up for the month-plus of the season that has already been lost.
if the games are on ESPN and i can get the app up I will absolutely watch if i remember when the games are.
App? Baseball should be watched on a tv. Preferably a large one.
(Insert old man yells at clouds GIF)
Smart TV???
I have the Amazon Fire. its an app on there. i agree though, watching sports in general on a phone is not my cup of tea.
I have a jailbroken Amazon Firestick, that it should be available on there. Thanks for the info.
I have a fire stick on the TV in my office. Would love to have games on.
Don’t they make you log with a cable service provider before you can watch ESPN thru the App on Amazon Fire? That is the case with Roku.
Yes sir! I have one as well.
My family doesn’t even have cable and radio works fine for me. It helps your brain activate as you imagine what’s going on instead of mindlessly watching a screen, not to mention you can listen to the radio and be productive at the same time. The radio broadcasters are still good even though there is no more Jerry :(
#BringBackRadioHype
Your family must have a lot of sex.
lol, to a guy claiming to be a 13 y.o.
Where was the joke, Vizionaire? He’s 13 and that’s funny? Come up with a thought so I can laugh.
Maybe he lives in Alabama?
are you his father or something?
his child bride
I watch TV two ways: Apps and Antennas. Why pay for anything else?
MLB.tv is an app that many of us watch on our giant TV’s. Because, 2020.
MLB.tv, & ESPN, and foxsports and many others have streamed onto TVs, from about 30 devices, for many years.
Here’s a question: if (heaven forbid) a decision is made in a month or two that baseball can’t resume in the US under any conditions in 2020 and the season must be cancelled, would some MLB players go to play in Korea or Taiwan or whatever country was playing. If so, ESPN or another network would be a lot more interested in paying for rights I would think.
I doubt any team would allow their star players to play in another league with the possibility of getting hurt on big contracts. For players like Yasiel Puig, I’d be on the next flight to Seoul getting ready for the season.
id imagine the stars wouldnt, but you’d wonder if teams may loan guys to Korea. maybe given their foreign player caps they could even make a barnstorming team of these loaned players.
It’s not soccer, can’t just lend players out. Plus, most Asian leagues have lomits to how many foreigners can play on each team.
most soccer leagues have limits on foreign players. for example, la liga has 3 non-eu players limit.that’s why a lot of players marry european models. some better than others.
Korea has a limit on the number of foreign players a team can field. The country is also much more conservative do they wouldn’t likely take a chance on a guy who has instigated on field brawls.
Hope they figure it out, I would certainly watch
When the season does start, what are these tv broadcasting rights going to do to our viewing? I don’t see MLB.TV having the same low yearly rate to watch all out of market games.
10/10 would watch Korean baseball if I can.
Any ex-major leaguers in the league right now? Da-Ho Lee, who played for Mariners?
I believe Gerardo Parra is there.
That will do.
He’s in Japan. I believe.
Byung-Ho Park jumps off the top of my head.
Dan Straily will be playing for Lotte Giants. He is probably the most prominent one.
and there is also Aaron Altherr
Straily’s probably the better hitter.
Some guy named Ko is there.
How much could it really cost to air KBO games? I would watch and I think many others would too. It’s not like ESPN isn’t paying to air cornhole day after day.
korea broadcasters must pay millions to show mlb games and espn wants free rights to kbo games? thieves!
Getting on Espn would open up a new and larger American audience for the KBO even after ESPN nixed it from their programming!
I’m sure that was ESPN’s sales pitch.
i doubt anyone would care to watch kbo games once mlb games come back on.
It’s not a strategy where you need a high percentage of watchers to continue once it’s off. If the KBO picked up a fraction of ESPN’s viewership as KBO fans that could possibly add 50k eyeballs to their league. That’s a really small % of baseball fans in America!
ESPN is a terrible network that force feeds their stars and stories down peoples throats, I’m glad the KBO and broadcasting company said no
Imagine that, ESPN trying to go cheap on the KBO. The NHL would not cave to ESPN when they wanted to pay peanuts to air NHL games several years ago and ESPN has buried hockey ever since. Almost no coverage even during the cup run every year.
As a Korean and a big MLB fan, KBO is difficult to watch if you’re looking for the normally top notch, excellent defense and strong arms of the MLB. But they play hard, lots of high scoring competitive games, and there are some real quality players. A big part of the fun is the cheerleading and the super passionate fans…but still the KBO should be a good temporary fix for our baseball hunger
wasn’t scoring down last year though?
Cancel your cable. ESPN has nothing to offer.
Agreed, especially since there are no games on. I’d kill to have MLB Network only subscription.
I really hope ESPN or some other US broadcast company does end up working something out to carry some of these games. in general I’d like to be able to watch a few to some of the US guys over there and then also to see potential “prospects” who might eventually come stateside. But then on top of that — with the coronavirus wiping out all US sports for now… I would definitely watch live baseball if we’re to be on TV given that there are literally no other sports to watch!
I agree. Also it’s lucrative and incremental advertising for their product to millions of folks who otherwise would never be exceedingly interested in the product. I know the money had to be a part of it, but having their games filling this chasm in the states for just a brief time may garner them some fans for life.
ESPN wanting the rights for free, what a scumbag freeloading corporation. It won’t happen but ESPN has not been good for sports in America and should be made to go out of business.
gosh man chill
Cut him some slack. He’s just mad bc he can’t get “any” for free.
This just goes to show it’s a business, not a sport anymore
I doubt they would get a lot of viewers on a live broadcast at 4am. Rebroadcasting it in primetime 7 in the states, while hiding the stats, would work.
The Olympics get played live whenever they are, then get a prime time broadcast.
Someone should invent a DVR.
Felt disrespected? KB oh is an organization that the average baseball fan could not pick out there’s biggest superstar in a police lineup. Several outlets have shown interest? Which means there’s one other shooter. Can we all need to get over themselves.
Greedy on the part of ESPN. Why would it benefit KBO to give away broadcast rights for free? They’re the only way to watch present day baseball at this point, and they have enough leverage to at least get something out of this.
I think a month to month contract would be reasonable, but ESPN can’t expect to do that without some sort of compensation. Baseball fans would watch it, and it’s not like ESPN has been airing anything much better anyway (excluding the NFL Draft).
I’d rather watch a chicken eat.
I’d rather watch a chicken eat.
You can say that again.
You can watch KBO games now for free, albeit in Korean. Download the Naver TV app or go to sports.naver.com games are at 6 pm korean time right now, or 6:30 during the season. Gotta wake up early to watch but what else do we have to do right now!
I’m sure they said we’ll get back to you.