European Association of Professional Baseball answers questions about ELB

Last week the new Euro League Baseball was founded. Even though I am enthousiastic about the initiative a lot of questions remain. In an interview with www.honkbalsite.com, co-founder Jan Maarten Kops answered a couple of the questions.

How about the rosters? If the teams will play next to their regular national competiton, their rosters need to be expanded. Will the extra players be eligible to play in the natoinal competitions too? Where will they get these players from? Will they raid the other clubs for talents? That would also not be in the interest of their local competitions.
According to Jan Maarten Kops, the intention is to borrow players from other teams in the own competition for the games in the ELB. The intention is also that once every two weeks, teams will play from Monday through Thursday. So with the current format of the Dutch Hoofdklasse, with games on Thursday, Saturday and Sunday, that the clubs that have lend some of their players to Curacao Neptunus or Vaessen Pioniers will be without them for the games on Thursday. Not an ideal situation.

Will other clubs also have a chance to participate? If the league will have a similar structure as MLB, where clubs cannot be demoted to a lower division, only the clubs in the ELB will reap the benefits and the gap between the rest of their home league will get bigger.
With the choice for two clubs per country the ELB has thought about traveling with both clubs to the country of the clubs they have to face, so they can safe on travel costs. If two teams of one country have to face each other, the games of the competion of their home country will be used.
The choice for only two teams per country does not mean that other clubs cannot join. There are plans for adding clubs to the European competition: There will be a possibility to participate in a qualification tournament every year, prior to the start of the competion.

Baseball in Europe is still small sport. Many clubs have a hard time to stay afloat. I really wonder how the financial part will be arranged. Italy also has a professional league since a couple of years. But a club that used to be one of the flag ships of Italian Baseball, Grosseto BBC, is in severe financial trouble. So are a few others. There needs to be a financial sound foundation to start and to continue this league. The interest of baseball is not served when the league will fold after a season or two and the participating clubs are left with huge debts. I have seen to many Dutch clubs disappear because they lived life larger than they should.
According to Kops, the success of the league depends on finding a sponsor who is willing to pay for the first three years. The league has a plan to save costs (travel costs as pointed out before, are one of them), so the money that the sponsor will pay isn’t all that much. So companies must be willing to invest for attention within Europe.

According to Kops, there must be attention for the fans too. Besides the explanation regarding the current European Cup tournaments, there isn’t much clear about that in the interview. Jan Maarten Kops claims that the current European Cup tournaments are fairly unknow to the public. “Before they realize that these tournaments have started, they are already over again. It would be better if games would be played at every day, so fans will know what is happening.”
In my opinion the real baseball fan will know that European Cup tournaments are played. I think that paying attention to the fans also means that there needs to be entertainment between the innings, like they have during minor league games.

The participating teams will continue to play in their own competiton as well. But eventually that means that those teams will get stronger and stronger and will finish way ahead of the remaining clubs. So that will not be in the interest of the national competitions. When two clubs will always play for the championship, the leagues will lose fans.
Maarten-Jan Kops claims that the key to the ELB will be the participation between the clubs in each country. They must be willing to help each other (read: the clubs that participate in the ELB). I think that will be the biggest hurdle to take.