I can’t seem to find the thread, but I commented once on how I thought it was dumb for the NFL to schedule one of their London games at the same time as an important EPL game (I think it was the Manchester derby). The general feedback was that the big bad NFL probably gave no thought to the EPL calendar, and simply planned based on what was best for its own scheduling.
Now MLB wants to gain some traction in the UK, so have planned a showcase 2-game Boston-New York series in London on June 29 and 30. This sounds great, right?
Except, the Cricket World Cup is happening at the same time in England. On Saturday, June 29th, Australia and New Zealand will be playing their match in London starting at right around the same time as the Red Sox-Yankees game. Okay, maybe enough cricket fans in England are only following their home team and won’t care as much about the Australia-New Zealand game, and will flock to the baseball game as a diversion from all the cricket. But what about the Sunday game? On Sunday, England will be playing India in the CWC, which is one of the marquis match ups in the whole group stage, and will likely be ending well after the baseball game begins. I can’t imagine any English sports fan skipping the cricket match for a baseball game.
So was planning this baseball series on that particular weekend incredibly stupid, or am I missing something?
What venues are they using? I don’t expect that London has any major stadiums built for use as baseball stadiums. If you’re holding a baseball game in London, you’ll need to repurpose a stadium built for some other sport. And I’d have expected that the stadium most easily repurposed for baseball would be the same one used for cricket.
In other words, shouldn’t someone have at least noticed that the stadium they wanted was already booked for that day?
I expect you are probably right, but fortunately there are 2 large cricket venues in London (Lord’s and The Oval), so this shouldn’t be a problem in practice.
I suspect they may have determined that the overlap between the baseball fanbase and cricket fanbase is not especially large. I would pay to go and watch a cricket match at the World Cup (though I’m not going to this time) - I wouldn’t pay to watch a baseball match in London (I’d probably go and see one if I was in America, and indeed have done on one occasion, but I’m not a fan of the sport). Admittedly this is only one data point but my suspicion is that this is fairly typical, and most of the target audience of the baseball is expat Americans and hardcore British/European fans.
Why would you think cricket grounds would be easier to convert than anything else? Sure, both cricket & baseball use a ball and a bat, but the layout of the fields is completely different. Probably easier to start with a completely sterile field, like soccer, and convert that.
Regardless, the Sox - Yankees games are at the 2012 Olympic stadium, which seats 60,000. According to wikipedia, the 2 London cricket grounds seat 28,000 & 25,000, so the MLB can sell a lot more tickets this way.
In case it wasn’t clear, my issue was not that the venue would be double-booked. Hopefully, no one in MLB is THAT stupid. The concern is that MLB is promoting itself during a period when there is something going on that is far more important to the local sports fans than baseball.
What’s stupid to me is sending the Red Sox and Yankees. And the Red Sox are the home team, so I guess Fenway gets 2 fewer games this year? Why take games away from a stadium that is always packed? Would make more sense to make Tampa Bay or Miami play a couple home games in London. Why do you think the NFL puts Jacksonville over there every year? You’d never see a Cowboys/Giants game in London.
The Sox and Yankees are two of the best travel fan bases in baseball. Their fan bases are well represented in all major cities, so a game like that in London will attract fans above and beyond just the spectacle of having MLB games in England. Yankees caps are everywhere, they’re like Manchester United. If Europeans know one baseball teams it’s the Yankees.
Fenway is pretty well attended, for sure, but the current owners have found lots of ways to fill the park with other events/concerts, so the hit isn’t as bad as it could be.
Jacksonville’s owner wants to play in London, IIRC. He volunteers his team and they have the most overseas games (6). The next 4 teams are the Raiders and Dolphins (4 games) and the Rams and Patriots (3 games).
Obviously, because I know very little about cricket beyond that it’s somewhat similar to baseball. In particular, I don’t know how a cricket stadium is shaped, so I guessed based on what little I know. Apparently I guessed wrong.
The Red Sox are compensated for loss of gate receipts at Fenway for the two games. So it’s probably easier to just do that with one team, plus more in line with rest of the season.
London is a big city. I’ve no doubt there’ll be enough curious people to get a decent size crowd despite the cricket being on. The bigger problem might be the rain. It’s been the wettest cricket world cup ever.
I don’t know how big cricket is in England, but it seems to me like an apt comparison might be if two popular rugby teams from whatever country has the best rugby teams came to play in the US on Super Bowl Sunday. Would that be a fair comparison, or is cricket not quite that popular in the UK?
I do know that, a couple years back, the Indians were playing in Cleveland in the World Series on the same day that the Cavs had their home opener. Traffic downtown was a royal mess. Though of course, that couldn’t have been anticipated, since the Cav game had to be scheduled long before anyone knew who was going to be in the Series, and the home opener had to be some time around then anyway.
They’ve already announced a two game Cubs/Cardinals game over there next year. This Cubs fan isn’t excited about that. I agree with Barkis - I don’t get taking big rivalry games out of the country like that. Much better played in the teams’ home parks. If they want to try to expose the game to British fans, maybe send them a couple of good teams that aren’t natural rivals like CHI/STL or NYY/BOS. Maybe something like a PHI/LAD series?
They’ve been pitching (ha!) travel packages for NY/BOS fans to go to London for the series. Those expensive packages are easier to sell for an actual rivalry game, rather than seeing the Red Sox play Detroit. I don’t know how many of those travel packages MLB expects to sell or how important that is to the success of the series.
Jacksonville owner also owns the Fulham soccer team in London , they were in premier league this season but got relegated down to the 2nd level for next year.