Taiwan has been “played” by Major League Baseball (MLB) over its bid to host the first round of the World Baseball Classic (WBC) tournament, Sports Administration Director-General Ho Jow-fei (何卓飛) told lawmakers yesterday.
The Chinese Taipei Baseball Association (CTBA) had also miscalculated the situation when it decided to make a bid in the first place, Ho said in response to the association’s announcement on Monday that it had withdrawn its bid.
The CTBA said it decided to drop out because MLB kept delaying its announcement of the host country, making it difficult for the association and the Kaohisung City Government to make preparations.
In a briefing to the legislature’s Education and Culture Committee, Ho said the CTBA first proposed holding the games in the International Intercontinental Baseball Stadium in Taichung and the Taipei Dome, adding the association later proposed Taichung and the Cheng Ching Lake Baseball Field in Kaohsiung instead.
The association even raised the amount of the royalty to be paid to the organizer twice, while the announcement of the host countries was supposed to be made by the end of last year, Ho said.
The association has yet to hear back from the organizer, so it decided to terminate the bid as the delay could affect the funding for the tournament, he said.
“The association did make a clear and in-depth assessment before it entered the competition,” he said. “I think we have been played by MLB.”
MLB has always focused on the business side of the tournament, and Taiwan and Japan had hosted WBC games in the past, he said.
The organizer has been eyeing South Korea as the host country all along and it only encouraged Taiwan to make a bid because it wanted to use it as a bargaining chip to ask for higher royalties from South Korea, Ho said.
“The fact the organizer kept delaying its announcement about the WBC host nation and its failure to provide definite responses following repeated requests from CTBA shows that South Korea was the organizer’s preferred choice,” he said, adding that South Korea also offered better infrastructure and higher royalties than Taiwan.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Chang Liao Wan-chien (張廖萬堅) said the WBC had increased the royalty to be paid by the host nation from US$18 million last year to US$25 million.
He said Taiwan’s defeat in the bidding was inevitable, given that South Korea has the Gocheok Sky Dome in Seoul and was willing pay a bigger royalty.
CTBA secretary-general Richard Lin (林宗成) said that while he would not comment on Ho’s remarks, the tournament organizer is World Baseball Classic Inc, not MLB.
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