Baseball: The Dying Sport

[Mott the Hoople]

Here's an article reposted from CNN that has plenty of statistics about how MLB is dramatically losing popularity. Everybody knows that. But nobody knows what to do about it. I think the new rules this season have helped. But it's a big hill to climb.
I'm an old guy. But I can remember afternoon weekday World Series games. I couldn't wait to get home from school to watch. Today is Sunday. There are no World Series games on Sunday because Sunday belongs to the NFL now.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/27/sport/baseball-world-series-viewership-problem-spt-intl/index.html

 

[sportscoach]

Here's an article reposted from CNN that has plenty of statistics about how MLB is dramatically losing popularity. Everybody knows that. But nobody knows what to do about it. I think the new rules this season have helped. But it's a big hill to climb.
I'm an old guy. But I can remember afternoon weekday World Series games. I couldn't wait to get home from school to watch. Today is Sunday. There are no World Series games on Sunday because Sunday belongs to the NFL now.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/27/sport/baseball-world-series-viewership-problem-spt-intl/index.html

The biggest issue in my mind...

The fact, if you don't have Cable, it's very hard to watch the games... I watched more Braves games than Indians growing up since time Warner loved to blackout the Indians games in my area while the Braves where always on...

If you want your sport to do well, you need everyone to be able to access it...

Plus can any casual fan name anyone not on their team? Most probably cannot name more than a couple on their own team. It's hard to follow a team, if you don't know the players...

 

[Soar]

There's a number of reasons for the decline. I think my main ones are:

1) I still think think the salary cap issue is a huge one. There is more parity in the payrolls we saw in the playoffs this year compared to past years but if you take the last decade as a whole and beyond, the higher payroll teams are more successful. You take fans in cities like Pittsburgh, Minnesota, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Detroit etc it is pretty hard to justify interest when your team is consistently fielding teams with half or even 1/3 of the amount of biggest payrolls. And even if you get it just right, you have a 1-2 year window before you have to rebuild.

2) There are too many games. 162 is about double the NBA and NHL. Add in spring training, post season, it is an absurdly long season. Much more easy for a casual to tune into one game a week (football/soccer) or a handful (basketball, hockey). Even shortening the season to something like 120 games might help quite a bit.

3) The lack of personable stars and too many stars on the West Coast. I mean Ohtani (maybe the best talent ever), Betts, Trout, Freeman, Olson, Judge, J-Rod are pretty quiet reserved guys. So many of the stars also play in the West (Dodgers, Angels, Mariners, Padres have many of the biggest names in the game) and not many midwest or eastern US fans are watching games that start at 10PM.