Having successfully staged live professional ballgames for a month in the midst of a global pandemic, Taiwan’s Chinese Professional Baseball League is now preparing for the next step. As CPBLStats.com covers, the league is preparing to welcome fans through the gates.
Taiwan’s CDC, which has overseen one of the world’s most successful responses to the coronavirus, already greenlit a proposal for 250 fans per contest. (Per the Fubon Guardians’ Twitter account.) The CPBL has already sought approval for permission to let a thousand fans through the door as soon as this weekend.
It won’t quite be business as usual, to say the least. The turnstiles won’t be rotating quite as many times as normal. And there will be restrictions on those that show up to see a ballgame in the flesh. Fans will not only have to provide their names and undergo temperature screening on their way in, but will need to maintain social distancing and don masks during the contest.
The CPBL became the first professional baseball league to launch after the coronavirus crisis halted play around the world. And it remains a clear success story, with no indication that play has interfered with efforts to protect the health and welfare of participants or the broader public. It’s also no longer alone in staging ballgames, with the Korea Baseball Organization kicking off play overnight.
Though it’s tempting to interpret these developments as cause for optimism, the sobering reality is that the situation is far different in Taiwan and Korea than in North America. Those countries have only reached the point of staging sports — and, now, allowing fans to congregate — after all but fully stomping out the spread of COVID-19.
I’m not entirely sure of the economics of the CPBL, so idk if its this a moot point or not, but is 1,000 fans worth of revenue even worth it in this case?
Exclusivity can be tremendously valuable but I would say its likelier that they’re opening the tap slowly.
Are fans going to be turned away if their temperature isn’t complying? I’m sure there are cultural differences, but that wouldn’t go over well in the USA
Singapore resident here. Everything is work from home at the moment but over the past couple months with our temperature screenings they give you a chance to redo it after a few minutes in case it’s a fluke (just ran in from the train, etc.). If you fail a second time you aren’t allowed entry into the office and are sent home to monitor symptoms.
If someone has a temperature, who cares if they are upset about being turned away. Go home
A 1,000 fans worth of revenue is better than zero.
After seeing that the avg 2019 attendance was 4-7K, I guess 1K isn’t terrible, but I’d rather see zero than 1000 in the US.
It may be a money loser for teams. Because of social distancing you need to have more gates and concessions open than you normally would for 1,000 people. And you have to have more of the ballpark open too. So you need to clean that after the game.
But there are two reasons MLB would want to start with 1,000. You start with a low number and if that works, then you raise it. You wouldn’t want to start with 20,000 at your first game with fans. It’s also goodwill for the fans. At least you can do something for some of them.
i mean 1K is 1K. its not a windfall, but if you think the risk is almost zero then why not?
It doesn’t snow in Taiwan, things will be fine there. And they would be fine here too if the world had followed Taiwan’s warning in December.
The CPBL teams are reportedly losing between 85K to 167K USD per game due to the closed-door policy.
However, a lot of people tend to forget those CPBL teams’ parent company are very wealthy. They are all multi-billion conglomerate with hundreds of subsidiaries across all sectors.
If we use Fubon Guardians as an example, their parent company Fubon Financial Holdings in the last fiscal year finished with 1.6 billion USD in profits. And we are not counting their subsidiaries in Telecom, TV Network and land development.
The cost of running a CPBL team a year was supposed to be between 10 to 15 million USD a year.
I would worry too much about them losing money, it is like pocket change to them. It’s just marketing/ advertising expenses.
Letting fans back to the stadiums is more of a gesture of goodwill and public images rather than financial reasons.
Hope this will clear some of your questions.
Congratulations to Taiwan leading the world in this pandemic response. Too bad the US response has been tragically flawed.
See my post below. They only have ~24 million people and we have ~328 million. A little harder to get enough test kits made to handle 328 million than it is to handle 34 million. Apples and oranges.
It’s not apples and oranges. Just compare Korea with UK.
“Population density is calculated as population divided by total land area.
European city-state of Monaco is the most densely populated country with a population density of 26,337 people per sq. km (68,212/sq mile) and its population only numbers in thousands. Chinese territory of Macau has the world’s 2nd highest population density at 21,717/km². Only these two have over 10,000 population per square kilometer. Population density of 3rd ranked Singapore is the highest among countries/territories having population over one million. Hong Kong and Gibraltar complete the list of top five most densely populated countries/territories. Among top 10, six are located in Asia and four are located in Europe.
All top 9 countries/territories by population density have population below 10 million. Of the 91 larger countries having population of over 10 million, Bangladesh (1,265) has greatest density followed by Taiwan (673), Republic of Korea (527), Rwanda (525) and Netherlands (508). In the list of 235, 12 have more than 1000 human per square kilometer.”
The fact is, the East Asians are simply the smartest people in the world.
“Top 6 countries with highest IQ in the world
1. Singapore
2. Hong Kong
3. South Korea
4. Japan
5. China
6. Taiwan
Avg. Brain size for East Asians – 1364cc; Whites – 1347cc; & Blacks – 1267cm3”
I’ve lived in HK/SG for the last 13 years. Your post is pure nonsense.
Well doing something (Korea and Taiwan) has definitely been more helpful than doing nothing and blaming everyone else (USA)
If you try to do something you can always be blamed for doing too much. Doing little and blaming everything that happens on someone else is not only easier, it can be more politically productive.
What is the population of India, and what percentage of India has contracted the virus?
I will wait for your rebuttal.
Rebuttal to what? You didn’t actually argue anything.
India has one of the lowest testing rates in the world, so the infection rate in India is unknown.
One thing to keep in perspective is the total populations of South Korea is ~52 million and Taiwan is ~24 million. A whole lot easier and quicker to arrange full testing and tracing of those population numbers than in our country of `328 million. A little quicker to produce around 100-150 million test kits to be able to test everyone in South Korea and around 50-70 million in Taiwan and have more than enough for retesting as needed just to get it started. The US would need 750 million to 1 billion test kits to be able to be at the same ability to get started with testing everyone here. Of course it will physically take much longer to get testing to the point where we need it to be in the US. Takes time to make 1 billion test kits.
people forget these logistical issues. this stuff is improving granted, but is not ready yet. not to say no one is to blame – the CDC is holding things up with their boundless red tape put in place years amd years ago – but thats the real culprit here.
It’s a logistical issue for a global ‘superpower’ to have a pandemic response in place before a pandemic?
What college did you attend? I would ask for a refund.
Thanks for the fact check, gozurman1. I guess the silver lining here is that we will eventually get to the point that Taiwan has reached; it just might not be in time to salvage this 2020 season. But that’s a price we should be willing to pay if it means saving lives. I hope the people here in the USA can act in a patient and ethical way.
Not really. The U.S. has a larger population but also more resources than any country in the world. What we lack is an overall national plan and the coordination required to deliver those resources to where they are needed. We are forcing every state, county and local government to fend for themselves so it’s no wonder why we’re getting such patchwork results and are behind the curve when other countries with far fewer resources at their disposal are getting ahead of it.
BlueSkyLA glad someone actually knows what’s going on. I’m missing Major League Baseball. We all do.
The reason we don’t have a national plan is due to the fact that the 2 leading political parties cannot agree on anything because whatever party in power would get all the credit. As long as they continue to argue over the little things we as a country will struggle. Both parties want to help but they still fight.
1000 fans? They are following the Tampa Bay Ray’s model.
And perfected by the Marlins.
The big difference is the Marlins close the upper deck and cluster people together at their games. They now need to do the opposite.
It would be funny if MLB allows 1,000 people per game and the Marlins don’t draw that.
I remember a Marlins game a few years ago that featured a fan sitting virtually alone behind home plate who could be easily heard on TV swearing profusely at the umpire. They had to ask him to can it. Montreal was another place were individual fans could be heard sometimes but they had to shout over the din of the air conditioning system. If we really do go to small numbers of fans admitted to games it could get interesting.
Hahaha
Don’t report anything from their country. They infected the world and are opening up first? It’s a slap in the face. Jeff and the rest of the media should be forced to stop.
Taiwan and China are not the same country, lugnut.
Try growing some brain dude. China ain’t got no professional baseball. What they DID do is take all enjoyable sports away with their ignorance and PRC nonsense.
By the way, the CPBL is a professional baseball league based in Taiwan, it got nothing to do with the PRC (China) at all.
If the season starts on the last full week in june and ends in September, you can get a 100 game season with 1 day off a week and sunday doubleheaders ( also carry a 30 msn roster)..other than that seasons a wasted one and shouldn’t even bother with one… but heres what nobody mentions.. what about the tv and radio crew? Cant do 6 ft apart in a booth. Plus 2 or 3 guys on tv, 2 on radio and lots of them are up there in age.. and in the mets ron darling’s case, a cancer recovery person. How do you handle this part of the game? Cant call games from home.
And how do you keep people 6 feet apart as they leave the park? Everyone is rushing to get to the parking lot.
I’m sure they can figure a way to let 1000 fans exit the stadium without breaking the social distancing rule. Probably section by section?
Taiwanese fan here. To anyone who’s wondering how CPBL economics works here’s a quick brief:
1. teams seldom have a net positive revenue, even with attendance. last year, only the Lamigo Monkeys (now owned by Rakuten) actually profited.
2. enterprises that own the teams toss in funding purely for marketing of their brand and appreciation for the game. Yup, that’s how much we love baseball.
3. Like other non-MLB leagues broadcasting deals are lucrative especially now with corona, but does not patch up the entire costs. These figures are clearly fractional to anyone who knows a bit of Major League broadcasting.
Taiwan acted quickly in January so the virus never took hold there, while the US fiddled for 2 more months. Taiwan was able to reopen its in a few weeks in February, well before the US even thought about closing schools.
The US is opening back up while the virus is still spreading. It is too late to have the success that Taiwan did.