Buy me some buttered scones and tea ...

MLB latest league to test British market

Blame the rain. All 30 Major League Baseball teams were supposed to be in action when the season opened Thursday and it would have been the first time in 50 years that every team played on opening day. But a couple got rained out.

But the opportunity is not likely to happen again for a while.

MLB plans to open the season in Asia next year and in 2020, which if past openers in Japan and Australia are any indication means a staggered start to those seasons, allowing for travel. But the owners and players have also committed to games in England in June during both seasons, setting up the sport’s most international season ever. (The New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox are near an agreement to play two games at London Stadium next year).

In the trip across the Atlantic, baseball will be following the NFL, NHL and NBA. Like those leagues, MLB will find both a deep culture of fandom and broad ambivalence about the game itself.

The NFL staged its first game in London at Wembley Stadium in 2007 and has played at least two games there every year since 2013. The league has also announced a 10-year agreement with Tottenham Hotspur to play games at the Premier League team’s new stadium, which is scheduled to open later this year. The NBA, for its part, began playing at least one regular season game at the 02 arena in London in 2011 (with a brief interruption caused by a labour dispute in 2012).

The NHL staged a pair of regular-season games in Sweden between the Ottawa Senators and Colorado Avalanche last November, but MLB has yet to play a game in Europe.

In the short term, playing in London creates immediate buzz on both sides of the Atlantic.

Both the NFL and the NBA routinely sell out and London games produce a reliable stream of news coverage. According to an annual tracking survey by Nielsen Sports, 12.9 per cent of U.K. residents say they ’re interested in the NFL, 12.1 per cent express interest in the NBA and 7.6 per cent in MLB. Jon Stainer, managing director for the Americas at Nielsen Sports, said the modest numbers are a good sign: “It shows that they can sustain interest.”

For the NFL to be leading the way is a triumph of sorts. American football, as a sport, has almost zero native presence in Britain. In last year’s survey, 20 per cent of those polled said they are interested in basketball as a sport and 15.6 per cent in baseball.