Bitter baseball rivals aiming to knock it out of the London park

Organisers hope clash between Cardinals and Cubs paves way for more games in capital

- Matt Majendie

MAJOR League Baseball is London's latecomer when it comes to America's major sports.

Twelve years after NFL first crossed the Atlantic for a regular season game in the capital and eight after the NBA followed suit, MLB finally came with some fanfare in 2019.

Arriving with arguably the two biggest franchises and perhaps its best rivalry in the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox, it provided two sell-out games for that season.

Then Covid hit and momentum was lost, so, too, the planned 2020 games between an older and arguably even more bitter rivalry - namely the Chicago Cubs and St Louis Cardinals.

Three years on, this weekend the teams finally converge on London Stadium for Saturday and Sunday games with in excess of 100,000 tickets already sold and organisers expecting most of the remaining tickets to be snapped up in the final hours.

But can MLB find a foothold in London in quite the same way that NFL has clearly done, having found two homes for itself in Wembley and Tottenham Hotspur Stadium with three games between five different franchises in 2023 alone?

According to numbers from the online ticket marketplace viagogo, of the ticket sales for the 2019 London Series 44 per cent were bought by UK fans and 43 per cent from fans travelling from the United States. This year, the numbers are 66 per cent in favour of the UK-based fanbase suggesting the audience is there in London and beyond.

Organisers would dearly love London Stadium to become baseball's traditional home in the city. More games are scheduled there for 2024 and 2026, with a foray elsewhere in 2025, most likely Paris.