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For those of you who have been missing live baseball on TV, and who can’t quite get into watching the CPBL on Twitter, there will soon be live baseball broadcasts on ESPN.
ESPN today announced it has reached an agreement with Eclat Media Group regarding the KBO League to exclusively televise six, live regular-season games per week in the U.S.
This will begin early Tuesday morning (US time) for KBO’s Opening Day. That broadcast will feature the NC Dinos vs. the Samsung Lions. Broadcast time is Tuesday, May 5, at 1 a.m. ET / Monday, May 4, at 10 p.m. PT. One game will air each day, Tuesday through Sunday, generally on ESPN2 and on the ESPN App. The telecasts will air Tuesdays-Fridays at 5:30 a.m. ET, Saturdays at 4 a.m. ET and Sundays at 1 a.m. ET.
Here’s the complete schedule for the first week:
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Those announcers, most of whom should be familiar to you, will be doing the broadcasts from their home studios. (This will likely be the way MLB games will be broadcast if a season begins — with announcers calling the games from home.)
Burke Magnus, ESPN VP of programming, said in a statement:
“We’re thrilled to become the exclusive English-language home to the KBO League and to showcase its compelling action and high-level of competition. We have a longstanding history of documenting the game of baseball and we’re excited to deliver these live events to sports fans.”
Un-Chan Chung, Commissioner of the Korea Baseball Organization, said in a statement:
“The KBO League is one of the greatest baseball leagues with world-class players and many exciting initiatives. During this unprecedented and difficult time, I hope the KBO League can bring consolation to the communities and provide guidelines to the world of sports. I am pleased that the KBO League can be introduced globally and hope this can be an opportunity for the development of our league and the sport.”
Enjoy the broadcasts — most of you will have to set your DVRs for these as I’m guessing you won’t be up in the middle of the night to watch them. I hope ESPN will consider some rebroadcasts in the afternoon or evening.