Yankees and Red Sox close to play in London in 2019

The New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox are nearing an agreement on facing each other in London in 2019. This as part of a regular season series, which was agreed in the latest collective bargain agreement between MLB and the players union.

Location for this event would be London Stadium, the home of the 2012 Olympics. Persons who know about the matter confirmed the stage of the talks. These persons want to remain unnamed because they are not authorized to talk about the matter in public.

One can still wonder why MLB is only looking to the British market. Europe as a whole is a much bigger market. Even though the history of baseball in Great Britain dates back even further than in the Netherlands, baseball is still a marginal sport on the British isle.
Even this marginal, the facility that is chosen for the game between the Yankees and the Red Sox, is not even suitable for baseball. What will the costs be for an overhaul of the field (the creation of base paths, a warning track, a batter’s box and most of all a mound)? And then we did not talk about the dimensions of the playing surface yet. One can still wonder why MLB is not looking for a facility that hardly needs to be adapted. In the Netherlands, there is a facility like that. It was created to lure MLB games to the Netherlands. There is plenty of room to build bleachers along the baselines and in the outfield so it can contain about 30,000 fans. Also the facility of the Buchbinder Legionaere in Regensburg, Germany, can be transformed to a big ballpark. Likely not as big as the one in the Netherlands, but the facility itself is fine.

MLB is the only major US sport that hasn’t played in Europe yet. Major League Baseball has set foot on Japanese, Australian and Mexican soil, but Europe has been neglected so far. But it definitely looks like MLB will start to discover the Old World next year. With the fiercest rivalry in baseball, MLB will have a fantastic advertising poster for this series.