After wins for the Rays and the Red Sox last night, the participants in the two Championship series have now been confirmed.  With the opening games of the NLCS and ALCS scheduled for Thursday and Friday respectively, they promise to be enthralling contests.  However, the brief lull in proceedings gives us an opportunity to look ahead to next year’s World Baseball Classic.  MLB’s marquee international tournament will take place in March and the broadcast details have been announced today. 

The rights to broadcast the second staging of the WBC have been split between two networks: ESPN and the new MLB Network.

The ESPN deal is the most relevant to British baseball fans.  The press release states that not only will ESPN be broadcasting games in America, but that “ESPN International has also obtained the rights to broadcast all 39 games of the 2009 tournament outside of the United States, to 167 countries in Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Australia”. 

While there has been no official comment today from the North American Sports Network (NASN), as they are owned by ESPN then it is safe to assume that they will be bringing the WBC to subscribers to the network throughout Europe.  By then, ‘NASN’ will be no more.  The channel, officially acquired by ESPN at the beginning of last year, is being re-branded and will be known as ESPN America from 1 February 2009 (coinciding with Superbowl Sunday).

Considering the WBC is effectively run by MLB, it was no surprise that their fledging TV network has also obtained the rights to broadcast games from the tournament.  The MLB Network is projected to launch in approximately 50 million cable and satellite homes on 1 January 2009, providing live games and much more. 

In the opening round, the MLB Network will broadcast all of the games from Pool B (containing Australia, Cuba, Mexico and South Africa), three games from the Pool C (Canada, Italy, United States and Venezuela), and two games from the Pool D (Dominican Republic, Netherlands, Panama and Puerto Rico). They will also broadcast five games from the second round.  ESPN have the rights for all of the other games (including Pool A: China, Chinese Taipei, Japan and Korea), although as noted above, their International wing has the rights for every game in the tournament.

For non NASN/ESPN America subscribers, MLB.tv will once again be our source of baseball action.  As yet, it’s not clear how the MLB Network will effect MLB.tv and the other MLB.com multimedia products.  It would presumably make sense for MLB to push American customers away from MLB.tv towards the MLB Network, but hopefully there will be no negative knock-on effects for us international fans who rely on MLB.tv so heavily.  Back in 2006, customers who took out their annual subscription to MLB.tv prior to the WBC taking place were able to watch the games for free and if that offer is repeated it will provide even more incentive for potential new recruits to save up and find the money to subscribe. 

The WBC was a fantastic tournament first time around and hopes are high that it will be even better in ‘09.  Today’s news means we can say the same about the TV/Internet coverage of the event as well.

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