MLB will not play regular season games in London next year

MLB has dropped plans to play regular season games in London in 2017, according to players union head Tony Clark. Should it revisit them at some point?

Baseball is a global game, and MLB aims to become an increasingly global league. Its latest plans for broadening the sport’s reach have fallen through, however. During this week’s All-Star Game events in San Diego, Players Association director Tony Clark said that the league has scrapped the idea of playing regular season games in London during the 2017 campaign.

“There was discussion about London early on,” Clark explained. “Unfortunately there were a number of moving pieces related to London that shortened our window in an effort to try to find common ground on that happening, and we weren’t able to get it done in time.”

MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred first mentioned the possibility of playing in London in a January interview. He said the league was looking at the recently renovated Olympic Stadium as a potential venue. Manfred stressed that talks were in their early stages, but that the overseas trip would likely take place in the middle of the season as opposed to the beginning:

“We are very interested in playing there, and we’re working hard on that one. I don’t think it will be an opener because of the weather issues. It would be later in the season.”

Major League Baseball has held regular season contests outside of the United States and Canada before, beginning with an August 1996 series between the Mets and Padres in Monterrey, Mexico. The league first ventured to Japan for the regular season in 2000, as the Mets and Cubs opened the year with two games in late March. MLB would return to the Tokyo Dome in 2004 (Yankees vs. Devil Rays), 2008 (Red Sox vs. A’s) and 2012 (Mariners vs. A’s).

The Blue Jays and Rangers started the 2001 campaign with a game in San Juan Puerto Rico, and the Marlins and Mets staged three contests there in June 2010. The Montreal Expos also famously played many of their home games in San Juan during the 2003 and 2004 seasons before moving to Washington.

In the most recent overseas trek, the Dodgers and Diamondbacks kicked off the 2014 season with a pair of games in Sydney, Australia. MLB has certainly become a well-traveled league over the past 20 years, and it’s only natural that it would eye Europe next.

However, there are likely more than a few players who view the nixed London plans as a potential hassle averted, and it’s hard to blame them. MLB players already contend with a relentless travel schedule during a typical season bouncing around the U.S. and Toronto from April to October. Add a cross-continental trip into the mix and it gets even more exhausting.

Players who have been part of those previous journeys have occasionally expressed their unenthused feelings about the overall experience. Yankees fans might remember Mike Mussina‘s steady diet of peanut butter sandwiches during the 2004 Tokyo trip in lieu of the local cuisine. Zack Greinke, then a member of the Dodgers, publicly claimed that there was “zero excitement” for the 2014 Sydney series, much to the chagrin of Australian officials and media.

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The NFL has played regular season games at London’s Wembley Stadium since 2007, a practice that has also drawn criticism from fans, players and broadcasters. Ultimately, these international excursions aren’t really for the benefit of the U.S. audience, which makes it hard for the league’s core fanbase to get behind them.

Staging games in international settings is essentially a marketing exercise, an attempt to grow the league’s brand around the world. For the average North American MLB fan, this isn’t particularly exciting as they are already devoted followers. With revenue consistently rising at home, it makes sense for the league to turn its attention elsewhere. It sees Premier League soccer and other international sports leagues carving out a niche in the U.S. and envisions itself doing the same.

MLB hats won’t spring up in the U.K. overnight, but sending some of the league’s stars over there to play a few games could plant a seed that will bear fruit in the years ahead. However, that’s undoubtedly easier in a place like Japan, where MLB had popular native sons like Ichiro Suzuki and Hideki Matsui to center its efforts around.

Major League Baseball will surely revisit the subject again, and some kind of event will probably end up happening in London in one form or another. They might want to reconsider making it a midseason series, though. The teams that journeyed to Japan and Australia returned stateside to play a few more Spring Training games (an odd thing in its own right) before beginning the season proper. Clubs traveling to London in June or July would likely need some clever scheduling in order to receive a similar respite.

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MLB doesn’t have to give up its London dreams outright, but it would perhaps be more agreeable to plan something outside of the midsummer grind.

What do you think about MLB playing regular season games in London? Sound off in the comment section below.