Baseball is in a pickle. Not the kind on the base paths, with a runner trying to dodge a tag, but with the game itself is facing a mounting problem with declining attendance, a continued sharp drop in national TV ratings and an aging and non-diverse fan base.
The truncated 2020 season, in which teams played only 60 games in mostly empty stadiums, added to fiscal concerns. Major League Baseball reported losing $1 billion last season. Like an aging pitcher losing his fastball, baseball is exploring options.
Kennesaw State University economics professor J.C. Bradbury, who studies sports and economics, said baseball is raking in money from sources other than tickets, beer and popcorn. The sport has formed deals with casinos, streaming services, companies across the globe and numerous other corporate partners.
One approach it is trying under Commissioner Rob Manfred is striking deals with Chinese companies. In April, as the 2021 season was getting under way, MLB announced it had expanded a rights agreement with Tencent, a Chinese multinational technology conglomerate holding company.
Under the three-year deal, big league games will continue to be shown in China through Tencent, and will also be available in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand through WeTV, an international over-the-top (OTT) platform.
Tencent owns WeChat and QQ, social media applications with more than 1 billion users. The firm works closely with the one-party Chinese to provide censorship and surveillance of citizens, monitoring millions of conversations at internet cafés while relating the users’ identities to police stations, according to Victor Gevers, a Dutch online presence known as the “ethical hacker.”
WeTV also has viewers in Bangladesh, Brunei, Cambodia, the Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Vietnam.
In addition, MLB struck a deal with Oriental Pearl Media of China, the owner of IPTV platform BesTV as well as regional cable television channels. That means MLB games will be available in more than 100 million households in the country as well as all terminals, screens, buses and subways.
MLB also is investing in the game itself in China, where baseball is slowly gaining a foothold. Its roots in the country go back at least to 1863, but unlike Japan, where the game has a long, successful history, China never fully embraced the sport.
In 1959, under Communist Party Chairman Mao Tse-Tung, the game was studied by military and civilian teams to learn about “Baseball in the New China.” But shortly thereafter, it was banned and all teams disbanded. Baseball, the Chinese people were told, was an “evil” Western influence.
After Mao died in 1976, with estimates that his oppressive and at times conflicting decisions led to the deaths of 65 million of his countrymen, baseball re-emerged.
Today more than 80 colleges and universities play baseball, and dozens of fields and training complexes are being built. Since 2018, MLB has been working with Chinese partners to expand the game in the country of 1.5 billion people.
China, of course, is interested in more than just the Great American Pastime. In the last two decades, Chinese firms have acquired more than $140 billion of assets in the U.S. economy. The majority of that comes from sovereign wealth funds and state-owned enterprises and government-connected private sectors firms, according to a report from Public Citizen.
Jim Small, MLB’s senior vice president of international business, said investing in China makes sense for baseball.
“The Chinese baseball market has great potential for growth, and with the sport part of the 2020 Olympic Games, I’m sure these efforts will help take the baseball to the next level, and MLB will be glad to be a part of it all.”
The Olympics were postponed until 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The games are set to start July 27.
The deal with Chinese companies continues unabated despite recent tensions between the USA and China. For baseball it’s about the cash, not the clash of cultures.
This contrasts sharply with MLB’s public stance in the United States, where it pulled the July 13 All-Star Game, as well as the amateur player draft, out of Atlanta in protest of the new election law passed and signed into law in the Peach State. That drew catcalls from conservatives, including former President Donald Trump.
President Joe Biden endorsed the decision to move the game to Denver.
“The president has made his concerns about the bill passed in Georgia clear, given its extreme provisions that impact the ability of so many citizens to cast their votes,” the White House said. “He said ... that if the decision was made by Major League Baseball to move the All-Star Game, he would certainly support that decision — and now that MLB has made that choice, he certainly does.”
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, said it was a “knee-jerk decision,” and further proof that “cancel culture and woke political activists are coming for every aspect of your life, sports included. If the left doesn’t agree with you, facts and the truth do not matter.”
Kemp said the law actually expands access to polling places while protecting ballot integrity. He said Biden and Stacey Abrams, his Democratic opponent in the 2018 gubernatorial election, were spreading disinformation.
Nikki Haley, a Republican who served South Carolina’s governor from 2011-17 and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 2017-19 and is pondering a bid for the White House in 2024, said MLB and other pro sports are displaying blatant hypocrisy. In an essay for Fox Business, Haley called out the sports organizations for their dual stances.
“Major League Baseball is deepening its ties with Chinese tyranny while criticizing Georgia’s attempts to secure elections,” Haley wrote.
Author and commentator Bobby Burack was blunter in an article for the website OutKick.
“Major League Baseball is so bothered by Georgia’s non-racist new voting bill that it is moving the All-Star Game out of Atlanta,” he wrote. “Major League Baseball is also so comfortable with the genocide in China that it just struck a deal with Tencent to stream MLB games in China. MLB is quite proud of this new streaming deal, locking it up until 2023.”