Former ruling party KMT(also known as Nationalist Party), which lost the presidential election in March to rival DPP, announced it will take over the Mars. This move, many believe, will make Mars one of the few teams in the world which is owned by a political party.
KMT Management Committee will assign one of its companies to take over the Mars officially. Also, it will pay all players' salary(Mars players haven't received any salary for a year) plus the 9M NT dollars debt which the team owes the league.
KMT is one of the richest political party in the world. In a recently released report by KMT, its asset totaled more than 78 billion NT dollars(2.52 billion US dollars).
With KMT taking over one of its teams, the NEW CBA will be in a much healthier situation. All five teams that will participate in the new season are financially stable. The only problem is whether they can regain the trust between one another and let the league office take care of all business and competition details. In the past, rarely a plan went by without team owners' argument.
Sources say the league office has set up the primary date for the new season. Each team will play 40 regular season games in the 2000 season. The season will tipoff on November 17 and ends its regular season on April 15, 2001. The playoff ends on May 13, 2001.
About 70% of the 100 regular season games will be played in Taipei and Panchiao, both located in the northern part of Taiwan. Other games will be distributed to all other major cities throughout the island.