ESPN Reaches Deal to Broadcast Korean Baseball Games

The KBO and ESPN have finally struck a deal to air Korean baseball games, however neither side is disclosing what the financial terms of this arrangement are:

The U.S. sports cable giant ESPN will broadcast South Korean baseball games to its American audience, starting with the first day of the season on Tuesday.

The Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) announced Monday that ESPN has struck a deal with Eclat, the Korean company with international distribution rights to KBO games. ESPN will air one game per day and six games per week, with an opening day game between the Samsung Lions and the NC Dinos leading things off. The game is set to begin at 2 p.m. Tuesday Korean time, or 1 a.m. Tuesday Eastern Standard Time (EST).

The KBO said ESPN will also offer KBO highlights.

In its own press release, ESPN said it will become “the exclusive English-language home” for live KBO games, and the deal covers the postseason and the Korean Series, the best-of-seven championship final here. Games will mostly air on ESPN2 and on the ESPN APP.

ESPN will announce its game selections on a week-to-week basis. It added that its play-by-play voices, analysts and reporters will provide commentary in English, remotely, from their home studios. The group will include Karl Ravech, Jon Sciambi, Eduardo Perez, Jessica Mendoza and Kyle Peterson.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but it will be interesting to see how American fans take to watching Korean baseball. It is too bad the stadiums will not have fans because it would be interesting to get American reactions to Korean baseball fans.