Ten days into the season, without a superstar like Manny Ramirez or the usual cable TV broadcasts there have been for the past 18 years, the Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) begins a new era that has many fans wondering if the game has changed for the worse.
Rather than leading the headlines with the anticipation of its 25th season, the league began this year’s campaign last month with the announcement of a new TV deal that handed local broadcasting rights to ELTA TV, which is only available on Chunghwa Telecom’s MOD system, thus terminating an 18-year-long relationship with the more popular Videoland Sports, which is available on all local cable carriers.
Most people would agree that it was strictly a business decision on the part of the league, which improved its earnings with a more lucrative deal.
However, fans who cannot make it to the ballpark are really going to suffer, since MOD is not nearly as accessible and requires an additional connection fee.
“It’s a shame that things have turned out this way. Perhaps [league officials] have excessively commercialized baseball,” one Chinese-language report said on the general reaction of baseball fans over the past two weeks.
Even though the live broadcasts of the games are still available online at CPBL.TV, frequent technical problems have made watching virtually impossible for those who try to access the games online.
As the sport had seemingly regained some of its popularity after Taiwan’s performance in last year’s World Baseball Classic and the addition of big-name players such as former major leaguer Kuo Hong-chih and Lin Wei-chu, a veteran slugger from Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball, it is extremely unfortunate that television audiences cannot gain easier access to the games.
Ballpark attendance figures have not been announced or analyzed and it is still too early to tell whether the switch to ELTA TV has encouraged more fans to attend the games.
However, it would not be surprising if the changes hurt the game financially in the long run due to declining interest in the sport, even if the league and the clubs are enjoying financial gains from a bigger paycheck from the media carrier.
Only time will tell if the league has made the right decision.
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