Why the World Baseball Classic is made of Fail
Most friends of mine aren't that in to Baseball, so I doubt this post will be significant to anyone, really. But I wanted to post some opinions I have about the World Baseball Classic.
I love the concept behind the WBC. It wants to be the "World Cup" of baseball. It's the only true top-level international competition. But the way it's organized and the way its run is ruining it. Extremely bad high-level decisions are crippling what could be a new era in baseball.
1) American's don't give a crap:
This is the main problem the WBC needs to combat. In America, baseball fans care about their team, and about the World Series. They're not particulary interested in anything outside of that. The vast majority of baseball fans in the world are in America. So, to make the WBC relevant, you need Americans to care. The WBC has not taken the steps it needs to cause more interest in the US. there is little to no advertising for the event, and only the semifinals and final are shown on national TV. You couldn't even watch America's qualifying rounds in a lot of places, but I'll touch on that later. The point is, WBC has done very little to drum up support in the world's largest baseball market.
2) Pooling and Advancement scheduling is awful
This year's tournament was won by Japan. They defeated Korea in the final. Japan and Korea both played a total of 8 games during the tournament. 3 round-robin games, 2 quarterfinal matches, 2 semifinal matches, and 1 final. During the course of those 8 games, Japan and Korea played each other FIVE TIMES. This makes for boring baseball. The problem was that the two teams advancing from a round-robin pool were placed in the SAME POOL for the next tier of competition. This guarantees that there will be a lopsided number of games between the better teams. In the other round-robin pool, America and Venezuela both advanced and then had to play each other again in the second tier. America and Venezuela ended up playing each other 3 times.
What they should have done was have the winner and runner-up of a round-robin pool advance to different tier-2 pools. This is obvious and done in all other tournaments. It's mind-boggling that they didn't do that.
3) Ambiguous Venue
Most international tournaments take place in a specific host country. For instance, the World Cup 2010 will be in South Africa. All games will be in South Africa. The 2010 Olympics will be in Vancouver. All the events will be in and around Vancouver. But the WBC was literally all over the place. It removes the feeling of a tournament and instead makes it a random collection of baseball games. With no opening or closing ceremony to speak of, it doesn't feel like a critical major sporting tournament. Instead it feels like a fantasy baseball league where you use a series of unrelated games to determine your score. It's lame.
4) Broadcasting
Despite the fact that they desperately need to get Americans interested, they decided to give exclusive broadcasting rights to MLB.com. MLB.com is a pay-service that only serious baseball fans buy. Alternately, it comes free with some cable packages, but most of them don't carry it. I'm a pretty serious fan, but I don't care enough to pay for MLB.com, and my cable provider doesn't carry it. So that was it. I couldn't watch. If they want the tournament to become popular, they're going to need to make it viewable by lots of Americans; casual fans who would be happy to root for Team America, but aren't going to go out of their way to buy a channel or change cable providers to get it.
5) That's not how baseball works!
The biggest problem by far is that baseball is not a sport that lends itself to a one-game decision. The best team in the MLB will lose to the worst team about 40% of the time. It's the nature of the game. Having a single game final is ridiculous. Even double elimination is not enough. The only way to properly do it would be with a bunch of round-robin games in 4 pools. Something like 18 games total, meaning each team faces each other team in the pool 3 times. The winners of each pool advance to quarterfinals. The quarterfinals are each a 5-game series. The semifinals are the same. Then the final is a 7-game series. With all the teams in the same general area (see point #3) there would be no travel, and they could easily play 4 games every 5 days. This means: 18 pool games plus 5 quarterfinal games plus 5 semifinal games plus 7 final games = 35 games, which could be done over 42 days. That's 6 weeks. It's a perfectly reasonable duration for a world-class tournament of that nature. For reference, the 2006 FIFA World Cup lasted 32 days.
In the end, I think the WBC is an excellent concept, but it's being executed incredibly poorly. They need to shape it up in a lot of different ways, or it'll go the way of the XFL, the IHL, and any of a number of other failed sport ventures.
-ATW
I love the concept behind the WBC. It wants to be the "World Cup" of baseball. It's the only true top-level international competition. But the way it's organized and the way its run is ruining it. Extremely bad high-level decisions are crippling what could be a new era in baseball.
1) American's don't give a crap:
This is the main problem the WBC needs to combat. In America, baseball fans care about their team, and about the World Series. They're not particulary interested in anything outside of that. The vast majority of baseball fans in the world are in America. So, to make the WBC relevant, you need Americans to care. The WBC has not taken the steps it needs to cause more interest in the US. there is little to no advertising for the event, and only the semifinals and final are shown on national TV. You couldn't even watch America's qualifying rounds in a lot of places, but I'll touch on that later. The point is, WBC has done very little to drum up support in the world's largest baseball market.
2) Pooling and Advancement scheduling is awful
This year's tournament was won by Japan. They defeated Korea in the final. Japan and Korea both played a total of 8 games during the tournament. 3 round-robin games, 2 quarterfinal matches, 2 semifinal matches, and 1 final. During the course of those 8 games, Japan and Korea played each other FIVE TIMES. This makes for boring baseball. The problem was that the two teams advancing from a round-robin pool were placed in the SAME POOL for the next tier of competition. This guarantees that there will be a lopsided number of games between the better teams. In the other round-robin pool, America and Venezuela both advanced and then had to play each other again in the second tier. America and Venezuela ended up playing each other 3 times.
What they should have done was have the winner and runner-up of a round-robin pool advance to different tier-2 pools. This is obvious and done in all other tournaments. It's mind-boggling that they didn't do that.
3) Ambiguous Venue
Most international tournaments take place in a specific host country. For instance, the World Cup 2010 will be in South Africa. All games will be in South Africa. The 2010 Olympics will be in Vancouver. All the events will be in and around Vancouver. But the WBC was literally all over the place. It removes the feeling of a tournament and instead makes it a random collection of baseball games. With no opening or closing ceremony to speak of, it doesn't feel like a critical major sporting tournament. Instead it feels like a fantasy baseball league where you use a series of unrelated games to determine your score. It's lame.
4) Broadcasting
Despite the fact that they desperately need to get Americans interested, they decided to give exclusive broadcasting rights to MLB.com. MLB.com is a pay-service that only serious baseball fans buy. Alternately, it comes free with some cable packages, but most of them don't carry it. I'm a pretty serious fan, but I don't care enough to pay for MLB.com, and my cable provider doesn't carry it. So that was it. I couldn't watch. If they want the tournament to become popular, they're going to need to make it viewable by lots of Americans; casual fans who would be happy to root for Team America, but aren't going to go out of their way to buy a channel or change cable providers to get it.
5) That's not how baseball works!
The biggest problem by far is that baseball is not a sport that lends itself to a one-game decision. The best team in the MLB will lose to the worst team about 40% of the time. It's the nature of the game. Having a single game final is ridiculous. Even double elimination is not enough. The only way to properly do it would be with a bunch of round-robin games in 4 pools. Something like 18 games total, meaning each team faces each other team in the pool 3 times. The winners of each pool advance to quarterfinals. The quarterfinals are each a 5-game series. The semifinals are the same. Then the final is a 7-game series. With all the teams in the same general area (see point #3) there would be no travel, and they could easily play 4 games every 5 days. This means: 18 pool games plus 5 quarterfinal games plus 5 semifinal games plus 7 final games = 35 games, which could be done over 42 days. That's 6 weeks. It's a perfectly reasonable duration for a world-class tournament of that nature. For reference, the 2006 FIFA World Cup lasted 32 days.
In the end, I think the WBC is an excellent concept, but it's being executed incredibly poorly. They need to shape it up in a lot of different ways, or it'll go the way of the XFL, the IHL, and any of a number of other failed sport ventures.
-ATW