Is This World Series an Opportunity for MLB?
During Monday’s chat I was asked whether this World Series marked something of an opportunity for baseball.
I answered the question briefly at the time, suggesting that the impact of one series could be overstated, but the matter deserves fuller consideration. Football is contending with some rather public concerns, obviously. Is it possible that this World Series represents an opportunity for baseball to grasp the attention and imagination of a younger audience? To make strides towards once again enjoying status as the National Pastime — or, barring that, at least to recoup the gains made by the NFL over the last two decades?
I understand that a portion, perhaps a significant percentage, of this site’s audience doesn’t really care how popular baseball is. There is perhaps even a portion of baseball’s fanbase pleased that it’s not the No. 1 spectator sport in America, avoiding oversaturation of the sport on ESPN, etc. There are some who might jealously protect it, like one might a favorite indie band for fear that it becomes mainstream, begins performing in NBA-style arenas, and eventually loses that quality that made it most appealing.
This concern with ranking among peers might be overstated, of course. While baseball hasn’t topped the charts in the United States for some time, it’s not as if Major League Baseball is a small-time act or hurting in any obvious way. Revenues continue to reach marks, after all, soaring beyond $10 billion per annum.
Still, Major League Baseball remains a business and is always looking to reach new customers and expand its footprint and influence. It’s why MLB commissioner Rob Manfred is so interested in increasing youth participation.
While people often look at this effort as an attempt to increase the future player pool — and it is, in part — it’s really more important to the expansion of the future customer pool. If one has played the sport as a child, they’re more likely to follow it — and pay for tickets, concessions, media packages, to watch commercials during telecasts — as an adult. And for the long-term health of the sport, baseball is exposed to some risk if it becomes too much of a country-club endeavor. As it is, equipment, instruction, and travel costs are already pricing families out of the sport. It’s not just in urban environments where baseball has lost ground, but rural areas, too — a development that I explored back as a newspaper reporter.
They don’t even play baseball anymore at Taloga High (Okla.), where Pirates shortstop Jordy Mercer attended high school.
“We had 12 guys total. All but two of them played basketball,” Jordy Mercer said. “Everyone knew you had to come out and play baseball and play basketball. Otherwise, we weren’t going to have a team.”
So to answer the question beginning this post in more detail, I doubt a series, a small sample of play, is going to be a significant driver one way or the other. But this author does believe many small things can add up, and this World Series is off to a pretty fantastic start.
Game 1 was played in remarkably concise fashion, over in just 2 hours and 28 minutes, the quickest World Series game since 1992. That’s significant because some kids, and parents of young children, on the East Coast might have been awake for the conclusion. (I’m not certain if it’s good or bad news that Game 1 ratings “narrowly” beat out TV’s This Is Us.) Pace has, of course, been another major concern of the MLB commissioner — and, I believe, rightfully so.
And then there was the epic Game 2 on Wednesday, which had as many plot twists as you could hope for, a game that was going to be played in about 3 hours and 15 minutes — not too bad! — if Kenley Jansen hadn’t suffered a rare hiccup.
MLB really couldn’t ask for a better start to this series from entertainment, star-power, market, and pace perspectives. And perhaps this October is a more important showcase.
Consider this study published by the international sports governance association “Play the Game.” The findings suggest youth football participation may have peaked and that it is now declining, with basketball remaining stagnant, and baseball slightly up. Soccer and cross country are enjoying boom periods.
Wrote its author, University of Colorado Boulder professor Roger Pielke Jr.:
If sport is a reflection of broader society, these numbers could be a response to the forces of globalization: Around the world, soccer and track have a much high prominence than they have historically had in the U.S. The globalization of international soccer, which includes soccer’s growing presence on U.S. television, would suggest that this trend might continue.
Of course, traditional American sports – football, baseball, softball, basketball – still dominate. Their growth has simply slowed since 2000.
But football’s recent decline – however slight – suggests that something’s at play at the grassroots of America’s most popular sport. Data are not destiny, but football lovers across the country should consider this evidence an early warning that all is not well in the sport.
Consider these charts from the study:
Moreover, football TV ratings are down again, according to the Sports Business Journal, perhaps for a multitude of reasons.
While trying to take advantage of another’s misfortune is rarely a good look, attracting athletes in an era of specialization — when more and more sports are competing for top athletes — is a zero-sum game. And baseball is stronger with more fans, and better athletes, in its ballparks. MLB is wise to have placed a significant focus on the grassroots level of the game.
One series, of course, isn’t going to significantly spike or damage a sport’s popularity. While baseball is hardly struggling, there are many things the sport could do, some things perhaps it ought to do to increase appeal. (Pace is probably the most obvious and more NCAA baseball scholarships would help. There are many ideas out there.) One week of baseball isn’t going to make fundamental changes in its appeal to the public.
But a compelling and brisk series is one that could better grasp the attention of the next generation. That counts for something.
A Cleveland native, FanGraphs writer Travis Sawchik is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, Big Data Baseball. He also contributes to The Athletic Cleveland, and has written for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, among other outlets. Follow him on Twitter @Travis_Sawchik.
Maybe if the games started at 6pm eastern time
As much as I’m for earlier starts (I’m in the central time zone), a 6pm eastern start is a 3 pm west coast start. There’s no chance alienating the majority of the country would be good for baseball
But 7 would be a fair compromise. West Coasters miss an inning or two (or adjust work schedules like they want East Coasters to do now) and East Coasters are in bed by 11:00 or 11:30.
Or maybe just start games at 7pm eastern time if the game is played in the eastern or central time zones, and 8pm eastern if it’s played in the mountain or western time zones.
Do you know what else alienated a metric fuckton of the country, particularly the people who will be supporting the league for the next 20-30 years?
An 8 EST start time on a Saturday.
I’m sure this will be shouted down, but … Why couldn’t broadcasts of Eastern-time games be tape-delayed in the West?
Insisting on live-everywhere broadcasts virtually locks in the 8-ET start time, which means that some in the East miss the end, and some in the West miss the start.
If those starts were moved to 7-ET (like regular season games), but the Western broadcast delayed to 6 or 7 local time, it would let far more people see the whole game. It would especially benefit youths in the Eastern zone, which has almost half the U.S. population.
Everyone prefers live events, but there’s an obvious cost to the compromise timing.
This would only solve part of the problem. And I know folks in the West already don’t like having their games start at 5 for the sake of Easterners like me. But it’s an idea.
Or they could just rebroadcast the games the next day at 7pm ET for Eastern folks. Then everyone can see the whole game!
JK.
Seriously it sucks, but it’s easier to hope people in the East will stay up a little later than hoping folks in the West take half-days at work.
Not a single person on the West Coast would wait for the broadcast to start on tape delay. Instead they would all be streaming it live. This would kill the revenue that is generated from the game. Add in that this WS features a Los Angeles team and that destroys the revenue.
There’s absolutely zero chance of that idea in the current era of so many people following along during the game to see stats online and using social media during games.
Even 10-15 years ago, it took a a fair amount of effort to DVR a game and then avoid knowing the outcome before watching it. It’s gotten much worse over time with things like automated notifications on smartphones and the rise of social media.
Why would a legitimate discussion get down-voted? I agree with many of the replies that there are obvious problems with this idea, but I think it is a valid discussion. I would personally watch tape-delayed broadcasts – I DVR stuff all the time, but I am one of those rare fans that wants to watch the games. Way more are just concerned with the outcomes – these folks don’t watch games in the first place. You could have an eastern and a western feed of a channel – kind of like how it is done on satellite.
1 series might not do it by itself, but it’s been a compelling postsesaon after last years Cubs run. Building blocks one after the other.
Gross! Soccer.
Fuller? Guess you learn something new each day.
One important note: It’s not JUST pace that is a problem. It’s also overall length of game.
Last night had a lot of excitement and a pretty good pace, but the length sucked. Yes, it was extra innings, and yes that can’t be helped (and we shouldn’t want to).
But while I stayed up until the end, I have multiple friends who are pretty strong fans who went to bed in the 8th inning thinking it was over since they had to be up by 6 a.m. for work. That’s not something baseball should be ok with.
And while those friends might have stayed up if they knew the game would eventually be tied, that’s not something sustainable for 2 weeks of mostly-weeknight games.
Baseball needs to speed things up and adjust start times. Games in the East Coast should start no later than 7 pm. If we can get 9-inning games to average 3 hours (or less), most East Coast fans are committing to the game being over by 10 or 10:30, or 11 or 11:30 for an extra inning game like last night. Instead, last night ended at 12:30, and I bet a majority of people who started watching in the beginning were not watching at the end.
Sorry, West Coast fans: you are going to sometimes miss the first couple innings. It’s the lesser of two evils.
At least make it a 7:30 start time for the first pitch. And while watching Vin was a treat for baseball fans, it probably didn’t do a ton to get the new, casual fans in. All that stuff should happen before the actual game start time, so that a baseball start time of 7:30 means the action begins at 7:35 or so, and not the 8:17 that it actually did. That ~40 minutes earlier start means that even with the extra hour for the extra innings, the game would have ended by midnight in the East.
Good points. And if we can speed the game up so that a 9-hour game routinely takes 3 hours instead of 3 1/2 (and 4 1/2 in the playoffs), we have most games done by 11 or 11:30 at the latest, barring a 15-inning game.
As insipid as the between-pitch commercials are at first blush, could they actually be a solution here? If more commercials can get “shown” in the flow of the game could the breaks between innings get cut down to a minute each? That would help with time overall and perhaps even have some halo effect in getting the teams used to a faster, crisper pace of the game which might discourage all the time killing activities in between pitches.
I think they should be limited to mound visits, but they are perfect to take the attention of 4-5 dudes standing in a circle talking.
The previous game set a record for its brevity, so I don’t think this is the most valid argument. Personally, I love staying up to watch a game. That is your fault if you turn off the game too early – the best games are the ones that appear to be over and are not!
I am trying to guess what coast you live on – I just can’t figure it out!
Length of the game is not a problem. The average game length is ~3 hours. Considering an NFL game that doesn’t go into overtime lasts almost exactly the same length of time, and an NBA game typically lasts about 2:20, they are all in the same ballpark.
Travis you touched on the way the youth game has transformed in the last decade or so and that problem is not going away. I’d suggest diving deep on the ecosystem of youth (specifically all those under HS age) travel baseball. The Little League system is a great model and it’s being needlessly phased out by something that costs more in time and money.
100% agree with the importance of the “club sports” conversation in general. I don’t know that anyone on the FG staff is particularly suited to covering it though – I also don’t know that they are not. It is a dirty affair and there are a lot of shills shamelessly promoting it for their own interests. If an author were to just write a story about it, they would almost certainly paint it in a glowing light as that is what the people who publish content about it do – they are promoting themselves and they have the pitch down. Some un-named authors here do tend to write some pretty puffy work, which reads more like a press release than investigative journalism and we don’t need more of that!
IMO, travel ball is the science of turning youth sports into a profit model. Of course, its not all bad, but that is the really dark and ugly side. I speak as a former high school and college baseball coach. I was on the non-profit (more or less) side of things, so that’s where my perspective comes from. Travel ball often gets billed as high-level or the way that you take your career to the next level – but that’s rarely the case. Guys made it before travel ball was even a thing… The instruction is not necessarily better – most travel ball coaches would kill to be affiliated with a high school program in my experience. I have met some real studs that work with travel ball kids, but I also have the feeling that they would be coaching somewhere else if they had to or giving private instruction. Another thing that travel ball does is it fragments up the good coaches and players in an area, which is kind of weird. Wouldn’t it be best if they were all working together instead of in competition – which it always is. I could go on all day about this issue. I know several kids that quit playing sports because it got too expensive… which is really sad. I know that coaches aren’t making money hand-over-fist, but the whole thing is just a series of overpriced transactions that add up to a hugely overpriced fee to play. You don’t need to leave the state to play baseball every weekend… I am all for a few showcase type events, but that is not really how it goes for most programs.
The expense of travel ball is not even in the baseball, it’s the travel. My wife’s cousin was in it for 5 years. May to August, nearly every weekend was in a new city. Can you imagine paying for 20-30 hotel stays per year? Most are $100+/stay. Then there’s food, traveling to the location etc. it wouldnt shock me if summer travel teams spent $4-5k a piece in travel as a family.
Travel baseball turned the sport into skiing IMO. Only the rich need apply. You can make it to the pros without it, but I wonder how many kids are turned away from the sport because of the perception that travel baseball is a necessity
Oh I know. $1000 and the travel on top of it… Much of the problem is the culture. If a HS team travels, then there are fundraisers and everyone bands together to save and make it happen. Travel ball generally doesn’t have that same communal element.
Travis left last night’s chat before game’s end because of the “demands of a young child” or something similar.
Starting Games 4 and 5, on Saturday and Sunday, before 7 pm ET would at least feel like an attempt by MLB to try and engage a younger audience.
Alas, MLB and its clubs have already made their Devils Pact with the national and regional sports networks to maximize revenue over best marketing the game to future generations.
Not to sound overly pessimistic, but I think we all underestimate how much work baseball has to do to catch up with the NBA and NFL. Rovell reported that the median viewer age for Game 1 of the World Series was 55 (!!!), and the MLB is just nowhere close to the NBA when it comes to capturing the attention of youths. There’s a lot of reasons, from the rising cost of youth participation to the length of games to the lack of engagement in the black and latino communities that are growing the fastest, and the end result is going to be a slow slide into irrelevance unless something changes.
Given the ageing of the viewing public, I doubt that a median of 55 forebodes a slide into irrelevance.
By “slow slide into irrelevance” I don’t mean that that the sport’s going to go away– there’s way too much money in those older populations for it to disappear completely. I do think, however, that MLB’s position in the zeitgeist is closer to the PGA’s than it is to the NBA’s, which doesn’t bode well for the long-term growth of the sport.
Yes, it’s not a great trend, and I agree it’s probably not fatal. That said, I can certainly understand the business reasons why MLB wants to address it before it turns into a big deal.
This report shows a median age for baseball viewers of 57 – http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Journal/Issues/2017/06/05/Research-and-Ratings/Viewership-trends.aspx
That doesn’t look great compared to the NBA at 42, but it’s more understandable once we see the NFL at 50 or college football at 52.
I’d also want to understand how the distribution on each viewership group is spread and how that translates into raw numbers for people of various ages. In other words, how much of the median age difference is that fewer older people (in raw numbers) watch the NBA vs. more young people (in raw numbers) watching the NBA?
I ask that in part because it looks like the 2016 World Series had generally higher viewership than the 2016 NBA Finals, with a peak for each in Game 7 (40 million World Series vs. 31 million NBA Finals). http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/more-tv-news/the-100-most-watched-tv-programs-of-2016-super-bowl-50-leads-by-a-mile/
And looking at local TV ratings for the bulk of regular season games, it appears that MLB ratings are generally better than NBA ratings. Here – https://www.forbes.com/sites/maurybrown/2017/10/10/here-are-the-2017-mlb-prime-time-television-ratings-for-each-team/2/#4b4a2cd163cc and http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Journal/Issues/2017/04/24/Media/NBA-ratings.aspx .
The city with the 4th highest local NBA ratings, Indianapolis, looks like it would be down around 20th for MLB team local ratings.
Interesting that the Pacers TV ratings are so good for a crappy franchise. I live in the Indy area – this is still a basketball first area. But the AAA team led the minor leagues in attendance again this past season. I think that is three out of the past four seasons. I think Charlotte outdrew Indy the season Charlotte introduced their new stadium.
I think the weather plays a huge part – our summers are nice so people want to go outside. Our winters are frightful, so people throw a log on the fire, have a few “winter warmers” and tune in to watch crappy basketball.
I am good with MLB being MLB. I don’t really get why they want to be something that they are not or why they need to gain ground. So, its not the most exciting sport to watch – I don’t care. MLB certainly isn’t going bankrupt, so I don’t really understand the problem. Isn’t it cool when you are the only person that likes something? I have no idea why we, the fans, would care about viewership of MLB games. Watch it or don’t.
I mean, if you care about the sport it seems to me that encouraging youth participation should be high up on your list of priorities. You might not care if nobody else is watching now, but you presumably want a steady stream of talented young players who chose baseball over soccer/basketball/tennis coming up through the minors, right?
I know the talent pool’s not in danger of drying out anytime soon, but look at boxing if you think it’s impossible for the most popular sport in the country to become a niche activity with only a fraction of the talent it had decades ago.
I did not really interpret this as being about participation. I always figure that we are talking about viewership, ratings and money when we talk about MLB. I don’t think kids choose baseball because they like watching it.
I agree with you Ronnie. I don’t really see a problem. And it seems to me youth baseball is more popular than ever. I live in Hamilton County, Indiana ,not exactly a population center and this area has always been basketball first. Just try driving around town on a summer Saturday – the local youth baseball field creates traffic jams. There are, I think, 8 fields, some with lights, and pretty much every weekend from April to September there are games going on from 8 am to 10 pm. If that is happening here, it has to be happening other places as well.
How do you get negative participation in a sport (looking at girls basketball)?
Negative “growth” compared to 2000, meaning that fewer girls were playing it than in 2000.
Never mind. I see that they are reporting changes. But if that is true, then football and wrestling are not becoming less popular, since they are still growing; they are simply growing less than they did before.
I wish they’d included numbers on population growth as well so we could see how participation is growing relative to that. The number of high school baseball players growing by 8% since 2000 means something very different if the overall high school male population has grown by 20%.
Would be interesting to see a stat with “share” of high school sports. A “no change” share of HS sports would look like an uptrend in count because of population growth. To me it looks like football probably has a smaller proportion of HS participation than it did in 2000 despite the increased count since the population has grown about 9% and football by like 5 or 6% eyeballing that chart. This is ignoring the current bulge of HS as a proportion of pop.
Yes, it strikes me as tough to discern some trends because at some high schools I’m betting that some of these sports are effectively “capped”, or close to it, by how many people will make the team (or will bother to be on the team if they have no chance of playing time).
There’s also some context missing in what Travis took from the report, because the report also included raw numbers. For male high schoolers, the top seven sports are:
Football: 1,086,720
Outdoor Track and Field: 600,136
Basketball: 550,305
Baseball: 491,790
Soccer: 450,234
Cross Country: 266,271
Wrestling: 244,804
Obviously there are differences such as that football teams are usually inherently bigger than basketball and baseball teams. For stats like “% change in participation”, though, I like to see the raw totals as well as the trend up or down.
Travis why do you hate baseball so much?
The NFL starts its most important game before 7 pm eastern on a weekend. It has the highest ratings of anything on TV every year. Of course there is no single game in baseball quite like the superbowl for spectacle, but building a youth audience, not just participation in playing baseball but in watching and enjoying it on TV, is vitally important to the business. At least one of the WS weekend games should start early enough that a 10 year old in the eastern time zone has a decent chance of seeing it end.
I don’t think the reason a ten year old won’t watch a baseball game has anything to do the time the game starts. It has more to do with all of the other entertainment options a ten year has today.
When I was ten, my options were:
Watch the World Series
Watch one of three other channels (one being PBS – yck)
Go outside and play in the street if it wasn’t raining or too cold (not likely growing up in the Midwest)
Read a book (which I could do simultaneously with watching the game)
Help with household chores (no chance)
Easy choice …
as the parent of a 9 and a half year old who lives in the eastern time zone, based on a sample size of 1, you are incorrect. My kid who loves baseball has seen not quite an inning of the WS so far.
How many would watch the SuperBowl if:
You couldn’t bet on it in any way
There were no commercials
Halftime didn’t promise the possibility of frontal nudity?
not sure you’ll ever fix the east/west time issue but MLB can sure as hell broadcast world series weekend games a lot earlier, such as 4pm/1pm or 6/3 and give viewers a choice. of course, it’s all on Fox so the NFL will win out.
the games take too long and end far too late, but unlike football it’s not a 60 min game taking 3 hrs to watch commercials and listen to Joe Buck.
It’s a tank team vs. the highest rollers. Without a dog in the fight it is very hard to care about this world series.
I have a hard time believing someone who visits this site is not interested in this World Series. Did you get here by accident?
Some people are only interested in watching their team. I find this to be an interesting match-up just because these are not the same old teams as every other year.
I think this is an OK time to point out a few realities of the NFL and how they may relate to MLB.
1) CTE/concussions – that is a major wart on the NFL and I do think that it presents some opportunity for baseball. Maybe not as far as fans, but for participation. I think we will see more linebacker type players in MLB (Puig, Trout, etc) as they opt out of the football route. This should be pretty cool to see.
2) The NFL has just become much more intolerable to watch over the past decade. This roughly coincides with the re-reinstatement of instant replay, which in my opinion kicked off a landslide of changes – all kinds of new unsportsmanlike conduct-ish penalties, way more pass interference, etc. They have changed the game a lot recently and the end result is not great to watch. As they have altered the game, it has gotten worse. It would be great for MLB fans to take note of this. When you change an established, successful game, there is really no reason to assume that it will work out for the best. We already see it in a flawed replay process and a kooky slide rule… take note because it is real. That is why I generally oppose change in MLB – I actually like watching the game and I don’t want it to change! The NFL has done a lot to up scoring as they have made it a passing league, but all it really results in is a bunch of pass interference calls and DBs basically are not allowed to cover receivers or dislodge the ball with contact. I don’t think it is better despite NFL’s intentions. Even if something sounds like I good idea, it might not be. At one point, the NFL was surging in popularity but they decided to deviate from that path, unsuccessfully so. I am certain that CTE has something to do with declining fans, but that would effect participation as opposed to viewers I would think – unless people like watching big hits and defense, which they certainly do. I don’t know that massive change is good for sports – perhaps MLB can learn a thing or two from NFL in that regard.
I agree that the NFL has generally changed rules to favor offense.
Some of that, though, has to do with your point 1 – CTE / concussions – and just overall injury rate. When you talk about “DB’s not being able to dislodge the ball with contact”, changes like the penalties for targeting a defenseless receiver are directly tied to that issue. With the current understanding of CTE and concussions, I feel certain that the rules aren’t ever going to allow a Jack Tatum-type in the NFL.
Similar connection on overall injury rate and all the rules protecting QB’s with much tougher roughing the passer rules. The star QB’s are the marquee names in the NFL, and the league doesn’t want them getting hurt.
And, while I myself have preferred a more defense-heavy brand of football, I’d say that the trends for the NFL and college football over the past couple decades have shown that an offense-heavy game does attract more casual fans.
I know that people do not watch more NFL football than they used to. Most of my friends watch NFL Redzone or just play fantasy football. I am the only one left that I know of who actually tries to watch the games on Sunday. I don’t think there are relatively more people watching games, which is worse in my book. My point is that the offensive game isn’t actually helping the product – in theory, you would think that it would help, but I don’t think it does. If the offense is attracting people, then why do less people like watching? In my experience, the average sports fan does not enjoy watching NFL games and that did not used to be true. Some of the change is CTE-related, but some of it isn’t. Regardless of motivation, the changes that NFL has implemented have made the end result worse. The same fate is happening to MLB IMO. This isn’t technology – newer isn’t better and it could be worse.
nice thoughts, but nobody cares about the astros lol
“Game 1 was played in remarkably concise fashion, over in just 2 hours and 28 minutes, the quickest World Series game since 1992. That’s significant because some kids, and parents of young children, on the East Coast might have been awake for the conclusion. ”
How about a game that actually starts (1st pitch) at 8 pm eastern time. Not 8:40 or whatever time it really starts at, after all the pregame bs. Anyone that actually wants all that happy talk and national anthem can tune in during the pregame show at 7:30.
Shoutout xc baby
They really need to start earlier if they want to attract young ones. I don’t know, maybe I’m in the minority on Fangraphs, but my kids are in bed by 9 on a school night (Central time). Last nights game was about as long after their bed time as the first games entire length. Of course the 7PM start time was a sham too, first pitch wasn’t until significantly afterwards.
You’re never going to please everyone when the US spans 4 time zones, but it would be far more preferable for people to listen to the first 2 innings on their ride home from work than miss the final out of the World Series. Even a 7:30 first pitch (East time) would help parents justify letting their kids stay up for an average game.
Completely agree. I go as far as saying during the regular season, the game should start at 6 PM local during the week, and have more Saturday games that start at 1 or 3 PM local. With technology today, we can receive texts regarding a game, there is stat tracker, there is live streaming, and there is even this ancient thing known as radio that people can listen to the first part of the game on the way home from work.
I am even for the quick 5 second commercials between at-bats as seen during Game 2 or putting ads on uniforms in an attempt to shorten the between inning commercial length.
I find it very hard to believe that more kids participate in Wrestling than Basketball. Am I reading this wrong?
Those graphs were about changes in participation. So yes.
If Aaron Judge had been adopted by a less fortunate family, he would be playing in the NFL and both he and baseball would be the worse for it.
Not sure how much more needs to be said.
A significant part of the problem you identify has to do with the NCAA limiting baseball scholarships as severely as they do.
Aside from the actual game, does anyone else agree that the MLB commercials running featuring kids talking about baseball have been absolutely dreadful?
I don’t mind those commercials, I just wish they had different ones. And those commercials are for MLBShop, which is a little different. They are commercials for apparel and such, not to get kids interested in the actual game.
I don’t see MLB ever being more popular than the NFL. The NFL and football in general has too many inherent advantages:
Easy to bet on.
Easy to understand on a basic level.Watching a football game takes little intellectual ability to understand. Baseball demands a higher intellect to grasp at anything other than a novice level.
Your NFL team plays three hours 16 times; your MLB team plays three hours 162 times, so it is far easier to follow your NFL team.
Translates to TV much better than baseball.
Fantasy football is easy and takes little time.
Basically, football and the NFL appeal to the lowest common denominator. Baseball is more challenging to understand and enjoy. As a player, it is harder to be good at baseball than football.
Baseball was more popular than the NFL… hard to remember that it was America’s pastime at one point. The history of baseball is its best quality. This obsession to change MLB and make it more like other things is misguided IMO.