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By Tyler Erzberger
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It's difficult to get billion-dollar organizations to change their minds on important decisions.
We've seen it time and time again in sports.
A professional sports league or tournament will make a controversial ruling, prompting the fanbase to create a social media firestorm. They'll make their online petitions and get hundreds of thousands of signatures, demanding change. And the higher-ups will look at those signatures, laugh, and then go along with their day like they're nothing.
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But that's not what happened with the World Baseball Classic in Japan, which has already softened its rules after 24 hours of being announced.
The WBC announced that any fans attending games featuring the Samurai Japan team or any other official team at the Tokyo Dome in the coming two weeks would not be allowed to post photos or videos they took at the games. Beyond that, they advised fans who paid a premium for their tickets not to take any photos or film of their experience, social media or not.
After the rule was publicized on social media, fans in Japan did not start a silly online petition or organize a protest.
They attacked the WBC with memes.
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Fans who attended exhibition games in the lead-up to the WBC took over social media in Asia, making fun of the outrageous rules set for them.
A few fans went viral, saying their watercolor photos of the Tokyo Dome were nothing more than drawings made while watching the game from the stands. Others blurred the scoreboard, noting that no one would ever know where they were if they couldn't read which teams were playing.
The memes kept coming one after another. Thousands of likes for each. Millions of views.
Finally, not even a full day after announcing the regulations, the WBC announced that it was softening its strict rules on fans taking photographs and videos of players in the Tokyo Dome.
The World Baseball Classic hasn't even begun yet, and Japan already scored its first victory of the tournament in a blowout.
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