MP & Silva to Distribute Media Rights for Chinese Professional Baseball League
January 27, 2014
Leading sports media company MP & Silva have announced they will distribute the global media rights for the Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) for six years from 2014 to 2019.
MP & Silva will be the exclusive advisor of the CPBL for all media rights sales to all broadcast and media platforms, as well as the production of all games. The agreement covers worldwide territories including Taiwan, and includes all regular season games, the All-Star Series, Taiwan Series coverage as well as the Winter League.
This announcement builds on MP & Silva’s baseball portfolio that includes the IBAF (International Baseball Federation), which features the Premier 12 and other international championship of each category on its calendar of events. This includes the World Baseball Classic 2013, which enjoyed unprecedented success from a global distribution and television viewership perspective and surpassing the previous edition by significant margins. In Taiwan the game between Japan and Taiwan played on March 8 recorded the highest rated cable program in the country’s history.
Said MP & Silva Chief Executive Officer, Peter Hutton, “We are very pleased with this new partnership as we strongly believe that the league has great potential for further growth. We look forward to building on our international baseball portfolio with this comprehensive global and domestic deal. This wide-ranging partnership is based on our ability to improve the profile of sports properties and increase its value through our distribution and production expertise.”
The Commissioner of the CPBL, Hwang Jenn-Tai, said:, “We are delighted to partner with MP & Silva to showcase the CPBL globally in such a comprehensive manner for the first time, with their significant presence and strength of their network. They are the ideal partner to heighten the popularity in our League, and we are confident that this will open the door to more commercial opportunities for the League and our clubs.”
WBSC co-President / IBAF President Riccardo Fraccari, added: “This is another momentous occasion for international baseball. This new partnership between MP & Silva and the Chinese Professional Baseball League further reinforces baseball’s established position as a globally attractive and viable product with still great potential for short- and long-term growth.”
The league starts on 22 March 2014.