MLB comes to London by Euan Cunningham/Sportcal Major League Baseball, one of the world's iconic sporting leagues, is coming to the UK and London for the first time this weekend. Charlie Hill, MLB's managing director UK and Europe, discusses why this is the right time, and how the series can pave the way for long-term European expansion. North America’s Major League Baseball is one of the world’s best-recognised, most-followed, and most successfully-merchandised sporting leagues. In 2018, it generated $10.3 billion worth of revenue, it regularly rates as one sport’s best-attended leagues (over 73 million tickets for MLB games were sold in 2016, for example), and its best players regularly earn upwards of $30 million a year. It is definitively one of sport’s greatest shows and spectacles. Now, for the first time in its lengthy and illustrious history, that spectacle is coming to London. Last year, it was announced that the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox franchises, fierce rivals, with 36 World Series titles between them, and the franchises which compete in what many view as the league’s most iconic derby, are to contest the London Series. This comprises two regular-season matches at the city’s London Stadium, formerly the London 2012 Olympic Stadium, on 29 and 30 June 2019, in what has been a long-planned, much-heralded exercise. The MLB also announced recently that it will then return to the London Stadium on 13 and 14 June 2020, with the Chicago Cubs taking on the St Louis Cardinals in another two games. Having already staged regular-season matches in Mexico, Puerto Rico and Japan, and with a franchise permanently based in Canada, the league has been expanding and growing in recent years, and those inside the MLB hierarchy have long viewed Europe, and the UK in particular, thanks to it’s so-called ‘gateway’ status to the rest of the continent, as the final frontier. Continue on https://www.sportcal.com/Insight/Features/126608

The Wimbledon tennis tournament is reducing single-use plastics The tournament has introduced several environmentally friendly initiatives to boost its eco credentials. Image: REUTERS/Andrew Boyers Johnny Wood Senior Writer, Formative Content Since 1877, when the first Gentlemen’s Championship took place at Wimbledon, the annual tennis event has been characterized by manicured grass courts, pristine tennis whites and a sense of tradition. But this year has brought a surprising addition to Centre Court at the All England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club. Star players including Angelique Kerber and Dominic Thiem will be wearing gear made from plastic waste as they serve, volley and smash their way through the tournament. Designed by Stella McCartney, the eco-friendly whites use materials discarded on beaches and upcycled into yarn, combined with fibres from recycled garments. Items in the collection are dyed using a process that reduces water consumption by 10 litres per garment. Continue on https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6550035300503044096

BIG TRANSFORMATION: FROM RUGBY VENUE TO BIG STADIUM HOCKEY The idea of constructing a hockey pitch in a stadium for one-off international matches has never been a possibility, that is until now. Thanks to a ground-breaking partnership spearheaded by England Hockey, this dream is now a game-changing reality. The dream was finally realised earlier this month, when some 11,500 supporters helped create hockey history at the Twickenham Stoop, thanks to a revolutionary portable hockey pitch system. The crowd made Great Britain’s matches against New Zealand the best-attended games in the nation since the London 2012 Olympics – yet another marker for a sport on the rise. In addition, England Hockey estimates that the men’s match had the biggest ever male hockey attendance on these shores outside a home Olympics. Since the beginning of the 2012 games, a million supporters have now paid to watch hockey in Britain, with the Olympics, Women’s World Cup, Commonwealth Games, EuroHockey Championships and many more events contributing to hockey’s new status as a genuine spectator sport. With the FIH Pro League coming back to London next year and four big weekends of hockey in the capital in 2020, the game shows no signs of slowing down! Continue on https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LQWN9T-mD_g# https://sportsvenuebusiness.com/index.php/2019/06/27/big-transformation-from-rugby-venue-to-big-stadium-hockey/

17 million Americans play darts: so where are the world-class stars? Despite an estimated 17m people playing darts in the United States, there are no Americans currently among the top 183 players in PDC’s World Rankings. Where are all the stars? Discover more on https://youtu.be/uZ_5LxEC70U https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/jun/26/darts-united-states-stars-growth?utm_term=RWRpdG9yaWFsX1RoZVJlY2FwLTE5MDYyOA%3D%3D&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=TheRecap&CMP=recap_email

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