It’s no shock that in the midst of a global pandemic, ESPN is getting starved out when it comes to having live content. They can’t broadcast NBA, they can’t broadcast MLB. They can’t even broadcast minor league variants of either. No hockey, no spring football scrimmages, there’s not even any collegiate soccer, baseball or even fucking ultimate frisbee or Quiddich to show.
And with no sports to talk about, their excessive lineup of talking head shows have no real reason to air, although they’re still managing to squeeze out a regular schedule of circle-jerking/talking about the NFL, justifying my nickname for ESPN being NFL Network Ocho.
In fact, ESPN has gotten so desperate for content, that they’ve even resulted in broadcasting basically YouTube clips of things such as competitive Tetris, among other eSports, mixed in between a cavalcade of “classic” games, in an attempt to draw any sort of ratings.
It goes without saying that no matter how much original content ESPN can produce, they’re still nothing without there being any actual sports to broadcast or at least talk about. Once The Last Dance airs its last episode, there’s really going to be nothing left for anyone to have any reason to tune into ESPN afterward.
Luckily for them, there are actual great countries out there in the world, like Korea and Taiwan, who have withstood their own coronavirus onslaughts and are way more on the mend and road to recovery than America is. And among the things returning to normalcy for them is live baseball, with the Korean Baseball Organization and the Chinese Professional Baseball League both announcing that they are going to be starting their baseball seasons in May; granted, they’re going to be empty stadiums at first, but it stands to believe that as things improve, fans will eventually be allowed in. But it’s certainly more progress than suggesting all MLB personnel go into a bio-dome in Phoenix and play a condensed season in one city over four months.
So over the last few weeks, there’s been intermittent news about how ESPN has reached out to both the KBO and the CBPL, and testing the waters to see there was any interest in making arrangements to have Korean and/or Taiwanese baseball broadcast globally (really just America). To no surprise, both are definitely interested, why wouldn’t they want to have their product draw interest overseas, and perhaps earn some respect that’s typically reserved for glorious Nippon-anything because America is full of filthy weeaboos.
However, a massive speed bump in negotiations has basically been the fact that ESPN doesn’t want to pay anything for the rights to internationally broadcast KBO, claiming that they should really just be grateful that they’re being given the opportunity to gain exposure outside of their native country.
Continue reading “The KBO should really just tell ESPN to fuck off”