Major League Baseball has officially announced the launching of it’s first esports league, MLB China eSports League.
The league will run in several Chinese cities, and will run on ‘MLB: The Show’ over the course of three months, which will see both a regular season and a playoff format. The regular season will take place in Chongqing, Chengdu, Xi’an, Beijing, Hangzhou, and Suzhou, and the playoffs will be hosted in Shanghai.
The league will also partner with eight esports organisations to appeal to esports fans, and will also host a recruitment channel on Weibo, a Chinese social media platform.
Additionally, MLB announced that they will host a MLB Experience carnival to help players who can’t join the esports league to experience baseball culture in China.
“Although we have seen many examples of the combination of esports and cities, it is not common to see the combination of esports and traditional sports and cities” China’s MLB operations team said in a statement.
“For MLB China eSports League, we are going to integrate these three elements together, and the traditional fans of MLB will witness our next level development. We believe that more young people will be attracted to enjoy MLB events by launching this esports league.”
