Major League Baseball and Chinese tech giant Tencent have announced a wide-ranging partnership that includes live-streaming 125 games and exclusive carriage of Jewel Events such as the All-Star Game and World Series.
To launch the deal, Tencent is holding Super Baseball Week with games on five straight days, Wednesday through Sunday including iconic teams like the Dodgers, Giants and Yankees as well as budding stars on other clubs like the Angels’ Mike Trout, the Indians’ Francisco Lindor and the Rockies’ Nolan Arenado.
Tencent will also broadcast MLB highlight shows, the baseball-themed reality show Perfect Pitch and a Mandarin-language version of This Week in Baseball as well as support the league’s initiatives to grow the sport in that country.
MLB began streaming games in China two years ago on a different platform, Le Sports, but is now shifting that package to Tencent, which began a three-year partnership with the NFL last season and a five-year deal with the NBA that started in 2015. Tencent broadened its scope of basketball coverage to include the entire League Pass starting with the 2016-2017 season.
“Tencent has continued to collaborate with the world’s top sports leagues securing broadcast rights for basketball, soccer, tennis, winter sports, football and now baseball,” Tencent vice president Caitlyn Chen said in a statement. “In recent years, baseball has developed rapidly in China, which wouldn’t happen without MLB’s dedicated promotion in China for over a decade. In the future, with the advantage of Tencent’s production and broadcasting, refined operational excellence and powerful social platforms, we will bring the attention to MLB and baseball in China to a new level.”
Tencent has surpassed Facebook in market valuation at more than half a trillion dollars and boasts roughly 1 billion users of its social messaging app WeChat. The MLB games will stream on Tencent PC, Mobile and OTT platforms, with additional promotion on other Tencent properties. MLB now counts 86 international media partners bringing games to 189 countries and territories in 14 languages.
“As MLB continues to expand the participation, viewing and engagement of baseball in China, it is critical to partner with the best organizations in the country to form mutually beneficial co-operations,” Jim Small, MLB vice president for the Asia Pacific region, added. “We are thrilled to team with Tencent, the largest and best distributor of digital sports content in China and a company that is widely admired around the world. We are confident that the assortment of MLB games, shows and events that Tencent will stream will entertain millions of sports fans in China and help continue to grow the sport.”
Upwards of one billion residents of China also have access to MLB games on a national, linear channel, China Education Television. A baseball-themed primetime TV show starring the boy band TF Boys and called “Boyhood” is the top-rated series in its time slot,with more than 5 billion online video views.
SportTechie Takeaway:
China has long been a target of American pro sports leagues, who see the populous country as a fertile market for export of their products. MLB opened an office in Beijing back in 2007, played two spring training games in China a year later, has opened three player development centers (which have produced three players to sign pro contracts in North America) and helped grow the sport considerably over the past decade, with more initiatives in the offing.
That growth can only be boosted by a high-profile partnership such as this one, which will help distribution of the big league product while pouring financial support into grassroots efforts as well. The payoff can be huge: just ask the NBA, whose streaming deal with Tencent is worth a reported $700 million, according to Bloomberg, with annual revenue in China around $250 million.