MLB Planning to Beef Up International Series Schedule in 2025
According to Bob Nightengale of USA Today, Major League Baseball is planning quite the ramp up of its international schedule in 2025.
MLB canceled plans to play regular-season games in Paris in 2025 when it couldn’t find a promoter to make the games profitable. There still are plans to have games in Tokyo, Mexico City and San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 2025, however.
Major League Baseball has already played games in these three countries before, but to play in all three within the same season is quite the effort. It's part of baseball's continued plan to make the game as international as possible.
While these games can impact the teams involved with regards to travel, they are generally good for the sport. They bring the sport more revenue, which (in theory) allows teams to spend more on players, and opens the game up to new markets.
When you open up the game in new markets, you create another revenue stream and have a chance to develop a new hotbed for players. Though these markets already have players in them, we've seen baseball develop markets in Australia and London through the International Series.
The Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres will open up their regular season in 2024 by playing baseball's first regular season games in South Korea. Those games will be on March 20 and 21 of next year and will be another way for Major League Baseball to reach fans in a different market.
It's disappointing to see the league not be able to play in Paris. Perhaps Major League Baseball had been hoping baseball would be in the 2024 Paris Olympics and there would be momentum, but baseball is out of the Olympic program for that year.
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