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.
Yes, ESPN really did pull the “exposure is compensation enough” card, typically made into an ironic meme amongst the creative class when cheap motherfuckers in the world try to get art/labor/content for free, because the audiences they reach will then more than make up for the wages not being gotten from them because they’re asshole pieces of shit who don’t want to use their money.
It is massively insulting and disrespectful that ESPN would even suggest such an arrangement, as it is for anyone to do similarly to any creator of content, but the difference is that ESPN is a billion-dollar company owned by motherfucking Disney, who owns pretty much everything, and has more worth than probably the Catholic church.
Thankfully, the KBO stood their ground, and those early talks kind of died in the water. Nothing is truly confirmed at this point, and everything is really speculative, especially with a layer of translation slowing things down for the western world. But supposedly, there’s a higher possibility that things may still work out for KBO to be broadcast on ESPN networks than there was when ESPN just wanted to pay in exposure.
However, because ESPN is still disrespectful fuckfaces, the rumored agreement is that the deal will only be done on a month-to-month basis, because they’re seemingly convinced that MLB will make some sort of triumphant return sooner rather than later, so that instead of having two baseball leagues to broadcast content from, they want to drop KBO as soon as humanly possible so they can start broadcasting MLB who won’t totally have a bunch of out-of-shape players, all-star pitchers getting blown up because their arms aren’t ready and a ton of injuries because baseball players are notorious creatures of habit and nothing is more habit breaking than a pandemic.
If it were up to me, the KBO says fuck you to ESPN and then some Korean company releases a cheap or free app or service that allows anyone in the world to stream and watch live KBO baseball. It might not get the sheer exposure that being on ESPN would, but word of mouth can travel fast if they’re literally the only game in town, and it would be nice to see ESPN get nothing, while the KBO wins out on all fronts, and then Stephen A. Smith gets released by ESPN in budget-saving measures.
That would be the best outcome ever, where KBO thrives and gains a global audience, while ESPN gains nothing and in fact has to let Stephen A. Smith go.
