Korea Baseball Organization will begin its opening week in empty stadiums

The Korea Baseball Organization will resume their baseball season this week. Yahoo Finance’s Editor-at-Large Dan Roberts weighs in on how American’s can watch the sport.

Video Transcript

JULIE HYMAN: We are talking, now, Korean baseball, which is not something that I ever thought I would talk about, to be quite honest. And yet it is providing a lifeline for ESPN right now.

DAN ROBERTS: Yeah, exactly, Julie. I don't think many American baseball fans thought they'd be watching KBO games right now. But that's what they're doing, because that's the sports that we have, you know? KBO was able to reopen last night. The first game was at 1:00 AM Eastern, our time.

And ESPN, really, it appears at the 11th hour, because they announced the deal on the day that the season returned, was able to get this deal done to become this year's exclusive English language broadcaster of the KBO. So that's the Korean Baseball Organization. We're taking with South Korea here.

And it's also, as I wrote on Yahoo Finance, a little bit of an unfortunate reminder of just the different paths that these two countries took. Because believe it or not, the same date, the first coronavirus cases of South Korea and the US, that was back on January 20. And the two countries took very different curves. And now here we are. US sports are still shut down, but the KBO has returned.

Of course, they're playing in empty ballparks, no fans. And everyone is wearing masks, except the players during the games. You've got cheerleaders performing. They're in masks. You've got mascots. And of course, the league has had to bar spitting. The players can't spit. The players are tested for their temperature twice a day, all kinds of checks and balances. And even the KBO, now up and running, says that if a player still gets it during this time, they'll probably have to shut down for three weeks.

But it's up and running. It's baseball. It's good quality baseball. And ESPN is showing the games live. And I want to give our viewers just quickly some explanation of what the KBO is so that maybe they can get into it. There's 10 teams. They're all named for corporate sponsors, which we're not used to in the US, but companies that we've heard of. Samsung is in there, LG. Our own Melody Hahm and her fiance Jason are Kia Tigers fans because his parents are from Guangzhou. So I also think that the return of KBO is going to stoke some Korean-American pride. And again, people are really desperate for--

MELODY HAHM: Hell yeah.

DAN ROBERTS: --watch.

MELODY HAHM: Yeah, Dan, when you think about-- did you watch last night?

DAN ROBERTS: I haven't watched, but they're going to re-air the games the next afternoon. So yesterday's or last night's season opener is re-airing this afternoon on ESPN 2.

MELODY HAHM: Yeah, so just based on my own rudimentary understanding of the game-- as you mentioned, it's really my father-in-law to be who is kind of into this game. Mostly to be honest, because we are so starved for sports, do you anticipate that this will bring-- kind of like K-pop did? Is Korean baseball actually gonna be part of the roster of sports that people care about? Or is it just kind of in this opportunistic moment that people are looking there?

DAN ROBERTS: So I think there's a chance that there will be a longer term bump. And by the way, big baseball fans have already known about the KBO, as well as baseball in Taiwan. You know, South Korea has given us a number of star pitchers. Kwang-hyun Kim, for example, another very good player, Chan Ho Park, these are our guys who come through South Korea and played in the Major Leagues. And then in addition, there are MLB players who have gone the other direction, who are now playing in the KBO.

So yeah, I think that you could see fandom of Korean baseball grow in America. But also a lot of it is just that, there's no live sports right now, so finally we have something to watch. I think it needs to get easier, also, to get the merchandise. Seriously, you know, I would love to get my hands on a KBO hat and they are not easy to find. I think someone like '47 Brand or New Era or Fanatics needs to hurry up and get on that. They probably have to pay up for the rights, but not easy right now to find a US merchandise site that sells KBO hats. They need to change that.

JULIE HYMAN: And all of this said, this is probably gonna be small consolation for Disney, which is reporting its earnings after the close. Because ESPN otherwise doesn't have a lot going on. Those shares, by the way, are down about 2/10 of 1%. They report after the close of.