The San Diego Padres will play the Los Angeles Dodgers in Major League Baseball’s first regular-season games in South Korea, opening next season in Seoul on March 20-21.
Meanwhile, the Houston Astros and Colorado Rockies will play in Mexico City on April 27-28, MLB said on July 12.
The Padres and San Francisco Giants played the first regular-season games there this April 29-30.
London series
Major League Baseball will have three sets of international games next year.
A two-game series in London on June 8-9 between the New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies was announced last month.
MLB also said the Boston Red Sox and Tampa Bay Rays will play spring training games at Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, on March 9-10.
The international opener will be MLB’s ninth, following 1999 in Monterrey, Mexico; 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2019 in Tokyo; 2001 in San Juan, Puerto Rico; and 2014 in Sydney.
Padres broadcast sales into “five figures”
In other business related to the Padres, Major League Baseball says teams have collected 94% of the money they have been owed by Diamond Sports.
That company controls 19 networks under the Bally Sports banner and has been in Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings in Texas since March.
Major League Baseball took over rights to San Diego Padres telecasts on May 31 after a rights payment was missed.
“Of the rights fees that have come due, I think we’ve collected 94% of those rights fees so far. And that’s really important,” MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred told the Baseball Writers’ Association of America on July 11. “We have backstopped clubs to make sure that there isn’t some unforeseen alteration in their revenue, and all that’s designed to put clubs in a position to not have disruption when it comes to the most important side of their business, that is putting a good team on the field.”
Baseball’s sales of Padres broadcasts in San Diego are “well into the five figures,” according to Manfred.
“Well before the Diamond bankruptcy, we were kind of on the topic of that part of the media landscape changing,” he said. “Our goal from the beginning has been to make a transition from the current situation into a new model that did two things, number one, increase the availability of our games to fans, and number two, to minimize any financial disruption for clubs.”
