MLB looking to play regular season games in London by 2017
Start booking your tickets to London now, baseball fans, because your favorite team might be playing there soon. Commissioner Rob Manfred said he hopes Major League Baseball will play regular season games in London as soon as 2017, according to the Associated Press.
“We are very interested in playing there, and we’re working hard on that one,” Manfred told the Associated Press. “I don’t think it will be an opener because of the weather issues. It would be later in the season.”
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Manfred’s quotes all but confirm a report from November, which suggested MLB had been looking to play a series in London in 2017. At the time, MLB did not respond to that report. Now, the commissioner has fully supported the idea.
The belief is that MLB will look to play in Olympic Stadium. The venue, which was built for the 2012 London Olympics, has undergone expensive construction in recent years, and it’s believed the stadium would be able to host a baseball game now. The stadium can hold up to 54,000 fans.
Plans aren’t finalized just yet, and Manfred said he didn’t want to talk about which clubs MLB would send to London if a regular season series became a reality. “We haven’t really settled on teams, and I don’t want to speculate about that,” Manfred said. He added, “obviously, we want to make as good a first impression in Europe as we possibly can.”
In his first year as commissioner, Manfred has talked about making a baseball a more international game. The NFL has had a ton of success playing occasional games in London, and seem to draw well even when premier clubs aren’t featured. In that sense, it’s no surprise MLB wants to play games in Europe soon.
On top of that, MLB already has experience with international games. The Arizona Diamondbacks and Los Angeles Dodgers opened the 2014 season in Australia, and the San Diego Padres and Houston Astros will play two exhibition games in Mexico City in March. The London series would be the first time baseball would attempt something like this in the middle of the regular season.
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Aside from travel-related issues for the teams involved, there’s no real downside to playing one series in London. As long as MLB can sort through some of those hurdles, it should make for a fun event.
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Chris Cwik is a writer for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @Chris_Cwik
