Meaning of ば in the news

Question

While watching this news I heard this sentence:

藤井八冠が“お菓子のふじい”を食べてくれればというのは、前から思っていまして、今後もぜひ活躍していただければと思います

I'm not sure about those ば's meaning: I was wondering if the second has an omitted いい, 活躍していただければいい ("I hope they will keep an active role"), but even if this is the case I'm still not sure about the first: 藤井八冠が“お菓子のふじい”を食べてくれればいい would be "I hope Sota Fujii will eat the Fujii sweets", which could make sense, but then again I'm not sure about the というのは part: if it's a theme marker, it would be something like "Speaking of hoping Sota Fujii will eat the Fujii sweets, I hope he will keep an active role", which doesn't really make sense.

Answer 1

The two are separate sentences, and I think the speaker didn't know what to say next when they said 前から思っていまして、. They tried to say something after that and 今後もぜひ活躍していただければと思います came out. I.e. there isn't a direct relation between the two parts.

Now re: 藤井八冠が“お菓子のふじい”を食べてくれればというのは、前から思っていました, this is mostly equivalent to "I hope Sota Fujii will eat the Fujii sweets", but it says 前から思っていました which means they have been hoping so for a while.

One could just say 藤井八冠が“お菓子のふじい”を食べてくれればと前から思っていました, but the reason they say というのは is: this is a bit more roundabout which comes off as more polite and less forward. 〜ばと思う is sometimes used by high-ranking person to "strongly encourage" the lister to do something, but the speaker in this situation wants to avoid giving that impression, so they are signalling they don't feel entitled that he eats their sweets.