Thursday, October 01, 2009
Baseball in Sweden
Posted by Alex PediciniI stumbled across an interesting post on Xconomy today about the Baseball World Cup qualification in Sweden. This got me thinking about the great potential for baseball to spread its market into Europe and across the globe. We have already seen the Latin American community and emerging asian markets embrace the game, why not Europe? Europe likely remains as one of the largest untapped resources in the baseball.
We have already seen the Netherlands achieve some success on the national stage when they upset the Dominican Republic earlier this year during the World Baseball Classic. Sweden is new to the game and their stadium seats on about 2,400 spectators but I would not expect this to hold back the game's development abroad.
Baseball might not be an instant hit in Sweden or other countries but with time and effort baseball could earn a large following in these foreign nations. This will only help the game here in America. More fans means larger merchandising revenue and it could also lead to potential scouting camps in these nations down the road as the game continues to be played and grows in popularity.
Alex is a student in Boston. He welcomes all questions and comments here
Europe would be a great market, but there just isn’t any interest. In the Netherlands for example, the following sports get more exposer then baseball despite the recent success in the WBC and the WC: Football (Soccer), (Field) Hockey, Speed Skating, (Road) Cycling, Swimming, Volleyball, F1, MotoGP, Athletics and Cyclocross. In the dutch major league the attendance hardly ever reaches over a few hunderd.
It is also telling that Robert Eenhoorn was the most recent position player from mainland Netherlands to play in the majors.
I wish it was different, but the europeans just dont like baseball.