MLB won’t stage a series of games in Paris in 2025.
Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred and his administration may have been able to steamroll politicians in Nevada and Wisconsin and get public money to either build a new facility or renovate an existing venue but people in France are not buying what Manfred and his group is selling. A Major League Baseball series of games in France in 2025. It appears no local promoter in Paris wants to risk euros on presenting baseball games in a market where the game is not played by many people. Nearly 68 million people live in France and less than 15,000 people participate in the game of baseball. But MLB is looking for euros and the plan was to stage baseball games in Paris in an attempt to grow the game. The real plan though was to sell merchandise and get some euros into the pockets of the 30 MLB owners.
Major League Baseball owners and the Major League Baseball Players Association assumed Parisiennes could not wait to attend a Major League Baseball game. In the 2022 Collective Bargaining Agreement, there was a commitment by both sides to grow the game and deliver the product to various locales on other continents. MLB and the players were confident that no one was going to see no to them. But someone said no, local sports promoters in France. It is unclear where MLB operatives thought Paris would be a perfect spot for baseball games. France has a full menu of local sports including soccer, tennis, rugby, handball, bicycling and basketball. The National Basketball Association is staging games in Paris. France is holding the 2024 Summer Olympics and is spending far more money on the games than originally budgeted. MLB will play games in London, England, which is not a baseball hotbed, along with baseball hotbeds, Seoul, South Korea and Mexico City, Mexico in 2024.
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