The relationship between Little League and ABC/ESPN continued to expand from 1983 to 2000, but not without controversy. ABC’s original 1963 contract was extended in 1983, 1987 and 1997 minimally adding additional broadcast games with 1997 being a turning point.
Little League expanded the World Series format in 1992 into a “pool play” format rather than an 8 team single elimination tournament increasing the number of games played in the world series from 12 to 15, making for more meaningful games throughout the tournament and as a result, a larger TV audience to ESPN.
1992 would be forever stained by the disqualification of the Philippines team who initially won the championship game defeating a future MLB player, Sean Burrows from Long Beach, California in the championship, 15-4.
After many rumors of overage and out of boundary players from the Philippines at the Little League World Series in Williamsport, PA, Little League chose to not investigate. However local media in the Philippines began reporting on the alleged overage and out of boundary players causing the league to admit to the out of boundary players.
Little League then opened an investigation and finally determined that the Philippines team was in fact ineligible to participate due to out of boundary players, but never mentioned or discussed the overage players, exactly as Little League at this point had ignored the same claims about the Taiwanese teams over the past 23 years.
The following year in 1993, teams from the Philippines, Taiwan, China and Japan were disqualified by Little League due to boundary and age verification issues, allowing for the first and only appearance in the World Series by a team from the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.
1995 and 1996 would be dominated once again by the Taiwanese, until the 1997 ESPN Media Rights Contract renewal year.
In April of 1997, Little League informed the Chinese Taipei Baseball Association (AKA Taiwan), that Little League would now be strictly enforcing residency and age requirements. The CTBA responded by withdrawing from little league and would eventually return to little league in the early 2000’s, but would not win another World Series until 29 years later.
Also, in 1997, Little League signed it’s final Media Rights extension with ABC/ESPN prior to a major Little League expansion in 2001. This year allowed ABC/ESPN to broadcast a Taiwan-free World Series and leveled the playing field for the rest of the participants bringing a more competitive field of teams to the television broadcasts.
Four years later, the landscape of how Little League generated revenue would change forever. With all of the events leading up to this point having a profound impact on Little League finances and operations, Little League was now in a prime position to negotiate Media Rights contracts just as NCAA Conferences had begun to do after the 1984 Supreme Court case, NCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma, determining that the NCAA had a Media Rights monopoly over all of college football.
This is part 3 of the story of Little League and their Media Rights contracts with ABC/ESPN/Disney. Stay tuned for further posts regarding how this story of money and media rights continue to plague Little League.