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Taiwan's oldest pro-baseball team seeks buyer

Taiwan's oldest pro-baseball team seeks buyer

Taipei (AFP) - Taiwan's oldest professional baseball team, Brother Elephants, announced it was seeking a buyer Saturday after its owner decided to quit due to massive losses.

"We hope to find a buyer by the end of this year and we thank all fans for their support in the past 29 years," said general manager Hung Jui-ho before bowing in front of a bank of cameras.

"This is a painful decision ... but the overall environment is changing and this is the decision we have to make," Hung told reporters.

The team has incurred annual losses of up to Tw$50 million ($1.7 million). Those coupled with the huge losses it has accumulated over the years -- which are more than Tw$1 billion -- have become unbearable for its parent company, Taipei's Brother Hotel, Hung added.

Last year, Sinon Corp, whose sprawling business empire runs from chemicals to supermarkets, sold its baseball team Sinon Bulls because of losses that were reportedly around Tw$1.4 billion.

The team was renamed EDA-Rhinos by its buyer E United Group which has businesses in manufacturing, medical care, hospitality and real estate.

Baseball-obsessed Taiwan has a total of four professional teams that also include Uni-President Lions and the Lamigo Monkeys.

The island's baseball league has been plagued by a string of match-fixing scandals in recent years. The latest scandal broke out in 2011 when six former players and a politician were sentenced to jail terms of up to seven years for rigging games.

All betting on domestic sports is banned in Taiwan. There is a government-organised sports lottery, but it is exclusively for games abroad, such as American baseball or European football.