Chung Yi-min would go to a baseball game almost every month and watch many more on television until four or five years ago, when the 36-year-old fan started getting fed up with the nation’s most popular sport.
“If they don’t catch balls I get suspicious because these are professional players,” said Chung, who works as an event planner and has watched baseball since childhood. “Everyone will think that the game result isn’t the actual result.”
Chung now prefers televised US Major League Baseball to local games because of illegal betting, which has cost the nation’s 20-year-old league a chunk of its fan base, taking income away from the sport’s development and lowering the national team’s odds of international championships.
Taiwan’s Criminal Investigation Bureau logged 102 illegal baseball betting cases involving 222 people last year and have tapped 20 cases covering 32 people so far this year.
Justice ministry spokesman Luo Chi-wang said that punters could keep their names secret from betting ring operators.
The Cabinet has said it will take a swing at betting this year, while celebrities and President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) have attended games to stimulate audience interest.
“Local prosecutors will keep looking into this matter,” Luo said. “Of course there’s a mafia connection but we haven’t deeply analyzed it. We’re not saying it still exists or whether it has changed.”
Taiwan’s four professional teams have lost 45 percent of their stadium attendance over the past five years, cutting attendance to about 573,000 per year, league statistics show.
Television viewership had sunk by more than half over the same period largely due to public suspicions about betting, a team president said.
Taiwan went out early from the World Baseball Classic last month and won only two of seven games at last year’s Beijing Olympics.
“If there’s no one watching, how can you develop a team?” said Richard Lin, secretary-general of the Chinese Taipei Baseball Association.
A decline in the number of baseball fans reduces box office income, drying up training funds and pressuring companies to consider dropping team sponsorships.
The specter of betting and threats against players also discourage students from taking up the sport in school.
“If no one watches, that will affect the images of companies that sponsor teams and they will question whether they want to continue the sponsorships,” said Jason Lin, president of the Uni-President Lions team. “And parents won’t send their children to play ball.”
A players’ association said last month that up to 100 members would sign more than 10 percent of their salaries to a local bank for their retirement. If a player was convicted of intentional poor play, the bank would donate the money to baseball development.
“False play has been such a problem in the past, so we need to increase self-discipline,” said Lions pitcher Pan Wei-lun, adding that he had never been approached by betting rings.
Most players were in fair territory but “a few” still played poorly due to mafia threats or the money received for cooperating with bettors, league commissioner Chao Shou-po said.
“Let’s not make the wrong friends or go to the wrong places,” Chao told players at a ceremony with the bank.
Shohei Ohtani and Clayton Kershaw on Friday joined their Los Angeles Dodgers teammates in sticking their fists out to show off their glittering World Series rings at a ceremony. “There’s just a lot of excitement, probably more than I can ever recall with the Dodger fan base and our players,” manager Dave Roberts said before Los Angeles rallied to beat the Detroit Tigers 8-5 in 10 innings. “What a way to cap off the first two days of celebrations,” Roberts said afterward. “By far the best opening week I’ve ever experienced. I just couldn’t have scripted it any better.” A choir in the
The famously raucous Hong Kong Sevens are to start today in a big test for a shiny new stadium at the heart of a major US$3.85 billion sports park in the territory. Officials are keeping their fingers crossed that the premier event in Hong Kong’s sporting and social calendar goes off without a hitch at the 50,000-seat Kai Tak Stadium. They hope to entice major European soccer teams to visit in the next few months, with reports in December last year saying that Liverpool were in talks about a pre-season tour. Coldplay are to perform there next month, all part of Hong Kong’s
After fleeing Sudan when civil war erupted, Al-Hilal captain Mohamed Abdelrahman and his teammates have defied the odds to reach the CAF Champions League quarter-finals. They are today to face title-holders Al-Ahly of Egypt in Cairo, with the return match in the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott, on Tuesday next week. Al-Hilal and biggest domestic rivals Al-Merrikh relocated to Mauritania after a power struggle broke out in April 2023 between the Sudanese army and a paramilitary force. The civil war has claimed tens of thousands of lives and displaced more than 12 million people, according to the UN. The Democratic Republic of the Congo-born Al-Hilal
Shohei Ohtani, Teoscar Hernandez and Tommy Edman on Thursday smashed home runs to give the reigning World Series champions the Los Angeles Dodgers a 5-4 victory over Detroit on the MLB’s opening day in the US. The Dodgers, who won two season-opening games in Tokyo last week, raised their championship banner on a day when 28 clubs launched the season in the US. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts shuffled his batting lineup with all four leadoff hitters finally healthy as Ohtani was followed by Mookie Betts, then Hernandez and Freddie Freeman in the cleanup spot, switching places with Hernandez. “There’s a Teoscar tax to
RSS