Those Disastrous World Series TV Ratings
The popularity of baseball is oft-discussed and yet somewhat difficult to measure. We can look at everything from attendance to jersey sales to commercials to revenue and yet fail to reach any real conclusions due to the constantly changing ways in which people consume media and celebrate fandom.
Another measure is television viewership and ratings. Determining the number of people who have enough interest to watch the sport on television should be a relatively good measure of popularity, although even those measures need context to make any sense. On one hand, local television ratings remain strong during the season, indicating relatively widespread support for the game. On the other hand, the ratings for this season’s World Series between the Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Dodgers were not good.
Consider a couple of headlines. Like Boston-LA World Series Struck Out Looking for Fox from the LA Times and like The 2018 World Series was Good for the Red Sox–and Bad for Baseball from The Atlantic. Even commissioner Rob Manfred acknowledged disappointment with the ratings after the first few games.
MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred says that he, too, is a bit frustrated/bewildered about current World Series ratings. Despite west coast/east matchup w two glamour teams, G1-2 ratings off ~10% & lowest since SF/KC in '14. "We're looking hard at it and haven't isolated a cause."
— Eric Fisher (@AEricFisher) October 26, 2018
To get a sense of how bad the ratings were this season, let’s first take a look at the ratings historically. While we might not have official numbers in yet for this season, we’ll use the 8.3 rating reported in the LA Times piece linked above. Here are the average ratings since 1984.
On the one hand, that doesn’t look too good. The numbers have, on average, been in decline for three decades. On the other, the ratings appear to have stabilized over the past decade or so, with the obvious exceptions of 2016 and 2017 — seasons which featured (a) two clubs attempting to break long droughts and then (b) seven of the most exciting games in World Series history, respectively. If there is any disappointment over this year’s ratings, it’s probably due to the high expectations created by the previous two years.
For reference, here are the annual World Series ratings presented alongside those for the highest-rated show on television in each relevant year.
For the most part, the World Series has followed general viewing trends. As more options for consumers have emerged, it has become more difficult for any kind of programming to attract a large audience. There have been exceptions: the 1991 World Series between Atlanta and Minnesota, a dramatic post-9/11 Yankees-D-backs event, and the Cubs curse-breaking spectacle. But the relationship between the TV’s No. 1 show and the World Series has been strong, producing an r-squared of .83 during this time period.
Just because World Series ratings mimic overall television trends doesn’t mean MLB shouldn’t be concerned. In this case, however, it shouldn’t be too hard to find reasons why the 2018 version looks a lot more like 2006-15 (9.3 rating) or 2012-2015 (8.4) than 2016 (12.9) or 2017 (10.6). There are a lot of possible reasons for the low ratings this year, including but not limited to:
- A lack of star power.
- Length of games.
- A lack of balls in play (i.e. too many strikeouts).
- The abundance of relievers.
- Start time of games (too late).
- The Dodgers’ lack of a local broadcast for regular-season games.
- The use of cable networks like FS1 for early-round games.
Those arguments have some merit if we are having general discussions about the state of the sport. The complaints above all probably have some relevance in a general sense, but they apply no more strong to this most recent World Series than the last few seasons of baseball as a whole. Rather, I think the disappointing ratings for the series are based primarily on two factors: overrating Boston’s impact on viewership and the games themselves.
Overrating Boston
Due to the presence of clubs from Boston and Los Angeles, there seemed to be some anticipation of really good ratings. At the very least, Rob Manfred’s disappointment suggests he expected more. The combination of big media markets seem likely to bring better ratings.
It’s a mistake I’ve made before, separating Red Sox and Yankees games from the pool of other games because the expectation for ratings is higher. The 2004 World Series is responsible for shaping that belief, when the series drew a 15.8 rating — that is, significantly higher than the previous two seasons or any of the years that followed despite ending in Boston’s sweep of St. Louis. In reality, that 2004 series was a special event, not unlike the 2016 series. We saw two teams in major media markets with well-publicized droughts capture the country’s attention.
Looking back at the ratings for 2007 and -13, we should have known that Boston’s presence in the World Series wasn’t going to precipitate a big ratings boost. In 2007, the Red Sox’ sweep of the Rockies, the ratings were even with the previous two years, short series won by the White Sox and Cardinals. In 2013, the Cardinals and Red Sox went to six games, but that was below the average of the previous five years, even with a couple of ratings duds in the Giants-Tigers and the Phillies-Rays as comparison. Having a bigger market helps, but outside of the Yankees or a special case, Boston isn’t going to create a big number.
The World Series Wasn’t Great
The Boston-LA World Series had its moments, including a marathon game that will go down in history, but two of the contests featured four-run margins, and another produced a three-run difference. The clinching game felt complete even with a few innings to go. In an ideal world, the last few outs are some of the game’s biggest moments in terms of importance and help boost ratings. That just didn’t happen here. The series was further impacted by not having Games Six and Seven, which also serve to boost ratings. The graph below shows average viewership by World Series game since 2000 compared with this year’s numbers.
| Game | Since 2000 | 2018 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 9.7 | 8.2 | -15.5% |
| 2 | 10.6 | 8.1 | -23.6% |
| 3 | 9.6 | 7.9 | -17.7% |
| 4 | 11.1 | 8.0 | -27.9% |
| 5 | 10.6 | 9.5 | -10.4% |
| 6 | 12.3 | NA | — |
| 7 | 17.9 | NA | — |
| Avg | 10.9 | 8.3 | -23.9% |
| Avg. 5-Game Series | 9.7 | 8.3 | -14.4% |
The addition of Games Six and Seven generally adds around 14% to the figure through the first five games. That alone accounts for a large portion of the decrease we see in the ratings relate to the past two years. Last season we saw two extra-inning games plus another three games decided by three runs or fewer, and that helped produce good ratings. That alone doesn’t explain much, as the series still did worse than what we’ve seen over the past two decades.
| Game Type | Since 2000 | 2018 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Blowout (4+ R) | 10.3 | 8.9 | -13.6% |
| Average | 10.9 | 8.3 | -23.9% |
| Clincher( G4-6) | 11.9 | 9.5 | -20.2% |
| Close Game | 11.1 | 8.1 | -27.0% |
| Extra-Innings | 12.0 | 7.9 | -34.2% |
The recently completed series was worse across the board when compared to similar situations, though even 15 years might be too far back to find a real apples-to-apples comparison. There are Game Sixes and Sevens included in this second table, as well as games featuring the 2004 Red Sox, the 2015 Cubs, and a handful of Yankees teams. The last three five-game World Series matchups have resulted in an average rating of 8.5, and this year arrived at basically the same result. There is probably a lot MLB can do to better promote the game of baseball, but fans ultimately tune in for compelling narratives and close games from start to finish. This season lacked both, and the ratings suffered.
Craig Edwards can be found on twitter @craigjedwards.
A sample size of one, but here are my thoughts:
1) Games were too late and too long (I go to bed at 9:30)
2) As someone who is part of the fanbase of a mid-market team, I had no interest in watching the Red Sox or Dodgers, especially given their recent success.
Yep, I can’t even think of a reason anyone who is not actually a fan of one of those teams would care. I guess maybe Yankees and Giants fans would be interested in seeing their rival lose, but your not going to move the needle as much when the only interest anyone has is negative.
I also think the playoffs can build on itself. And that didn’t really happen, even with the Dodgers/Brewers series going seven games, as the games did not generally have a lot of late suspense.
You know there are fans of baseball itself, right?
Are there more “fans of baseball” who’ll tune in for whatever or fans of small market teams with very low odds of seeing a WS winner of their own? I think it’s the latter.
I believe it was Bill Veeck who said something along the lines of “Serve only baseball fans and you’ll be out of business in 6 months.”
MLB has ruined the suspense with cable-only play-offs (25% of the country does not have cable); start times much too late for the World Series; ignore the next generation by price gouging (that’s why attendance declined this year); have some G-d awful announcers, and top it all off with too long commercial breaks.
The money remains there ($10 billion+ in 2018) but the fault lines (attendance, tv ratings) are showing.
Completely agree with @GoNyGoNYGoGo. There’s this constant droning from hardcore fans that nothing needs to change, that “casual” fans are worthless, etc.
The solution though is mid-game ad breaks though! That will surely make the experience better!
Cable – only blows for sure. Every series of 5 games or more needs a couple of day games, both for get away days and to attract younger (and oldish) viewers and East coasters when a Pacific time team hosts. And in a day game we can be a bit more tolerant of commercials … go get a beer, take a whiz, check your e-mail.
until they can differentially monetize the hardcore fans, the filthy casuals are gonna be the most important segment.
You know an 8.3 rating means people tuned in, right?
I’m a fan of baseball generally, but I really don’t like either of the WS teams and that influenced my viewership. I watched every NLCS game, hoping the Brewers could eke out the pennant, but only watched a few innings after G2. It was a pretty foregone conclusion that the Sox would win, so I couldn’t even watch for drama.
The Dodgers haven’t won a World Series in three decades–a longer run than many small-market teams, like the Reds, Twins, and As. I too am a fan of a mid-market team, but seeing that kind of streak of futility end is always interesting.
I don’t know if 30 years can be classified as a “streak of futility”. All things being equal (which they never are), you would expect a team in a 30-team league to win just once every 30 years anyway.
Right, but the original contention was that the Dodgers have had MORE than their fair share of success lately, and were uninteresting for that reason.
The Dodgers have made the postseason for 6 years in a row. It’s the third best such streak in baseball history. The Mariners haven’t made the postseason since 2001, and in that time the Dodgers have been there 10 times. The Dodgers have had a lot of recent success.
The Padres, Mariners, Rockies, Marlins, Brewers, Rays, and Nationals/Expos haven’t even made the postseason 6 times total.
When you have by far the most salary dedicated to players, it feels like your losers not worth rooting for when you do not win. When you do win everyone feels that was always going to happen. Neither scenario makes me want to watch.
This feels like you are saying the Dodgers have by far the highest payroll. They were third behind the Red Sox and Giants. But maybe you were talking about the Red Sox payroll
“Recent success”? Dodgers? No way. They have failed to win a World Series since 1988 (I should know, I was there for it). It is now quite clear to me the 1988 WS was the last one that the Dodgers will win in my lifetime. That’s personally depressing.
Yeah, I’m sure being the highest payroll team and ongoing current favourite in the NL makes rooting for them just unbearable. I mean, no team has overcome repeated postseason failures to finally win the WS since 1988. Except for the Blue Jays. And the Braves. And the Angels, White Sox, Red Sox, Cubs, Phillies and Astros. You’re DOOOMed!
Mostly this. It was a WS that many would have guessed going into the year. Both teams have starting pitching staffs that make close or more than entire teams rosters…..There was just no compelling storyline for actually watching.
I’m not saying it’s better or worse to have unexpected teams in the series, but how do you engage younger folks to watch a game where 2 teams with gigantic conpetetive advantages face each other? That’s not really fun.
Also. Joe Buck
I was horribly disappointed that “fans apathetic due to lack of league parity” was not included here, though hopefully the comments are making it clear that it’s an issue. You don’t have to be a huge fan of baseball to realize these are big teams who beat the little teams by buying a pennant. It’s like watching the Cowboys vs. the Cowboys. Who will win? Who cares?
Start times for me. When the games start after 8pm, nobody who has to work the next day is staying up for them. 6 or even 7 pm start times would be a lot better.
So you don’t want be late to work, but Dodgers fans should have to take the afternoon off to watch their team?
It’s just an explanation. The start times depress viewership in the Eastern time zone, even for fans of the teams. Maybe the times can’t be changed, but they do depress viewership, period.
Source?
Source is me and the many baseball fans I know who live in EST like me and who are saying the same thing when we to me when we were discussing the WS.
Also in Europe!
Me too. I didn’t even bother watching some of the games because I knew that I would have to be asleep by the 5th or 6th inning.
You mean like when they had day baseball games up until the 70’s? Yes.
If you started a game at 7 pm EST and actually implemented the rules to keep games moving, most games would be over by 10:30ish EST. Yes, it would start at 4 pm WST, but there are far more viewers in the East Coast time zone.
One can get home from work and still watch the 4th inning on. Watching innings 5-9 has to be more satisfying than watching innings 1-5 only.
you could also split the burden by having east coast and central games start at 7:15p ET and west coast games starting at 8:15p ET.
isn’t that what happens anyway if you’re on the east coast desk at 5 AM?
Wait, but the games in Boston started after 8:00 pm EST too?
I’ve seen this East vs West coast thing as an issue with times for a while now, and I honestly don’t see any way around it at this point. While the game started at 8PM for folks on the East Coast, it starts at 5PM here in Los Angeles. I am lucky enough that I do most of my work at home, and I could easily get up and start work an hour earlier than usual so I could be off at 5 and ready to watch the game.
But very few people here on the West coast get out of work before 6PM daily. Meaning that most Dodgers fans here in LA probably missed the first hour or more of the game, depending on travel times.
I agree it’s a problem, but I also think the solution is a lot more complicated than “start the game 2 hours earlier”.
Well but why do weekend games have to be on at 810pm as well? The issue there isn’t West Coast work schedules but not wanting to mess up the network’s football coverage. That still works to depress viewing in EST, especially on football days where lots of people are kind of “sports out” by the time 8pm rolls around anyway.
@Brendan:
In terms of overall viewership, your notion that daytime weekend games would have better numbers is at best uncertain. That’s due to exactly the competition that you describe: daytime games would lose some viewership of football fans which would at least partially offset (and perhaps more than offset) any gains of Eastern Time viewers with earlier games.
In any case, the last daytime World Series game was played in 1987, so nighttime games are a constant for the overwhelming majority of the time period shown on the graphs in this article.
They started at 5
MLB is the only major sport where the announcers are constantly crapping on the game. What if all we got during the NBA Finals was how bad the new reliance on 3 point shooting and fast breaks was? Yeah sure we get Barkley at halftime but he’s entertaining.
We like the local broadcast because we like our local announcers. I put the game on mute and put on Spotify during the WS.
Yes. I mean, I don’t dislike Joe Buck, but he doesn’t seem to have bothered updating his baseball knowledge in a loooong time. It’s like he’s obsessed with pitcher wins still… you don’t have to read FanGraphs to know that’s not how to evaluate a pitcher.
Yeah, Buck doesn’t just disdain analytics, he’s actively hostile towards them. He’s a pretty tough listen in 2018.
And also very obviously anti-Dodgers.
No, he’s not. Every fan thinks Joe Buck hates their team because Joe Buck hates baseball.
Joe Buck is from St. Louis and is an avid sports fan. Disliking the Dodgers is in his blood. To go one further, he was one of the highest profile St. Louis Rams fans to publicly detest the team’s return to its previous home in Los Angeles.
As stated, everyone thinks the announcers hate their team. Joe Buck’s childhood team, the Cardinals, have recently been beaten by the Red Sox twice in the World Series. I’m sure there are personal reasons for Joe Buck to hate the Red Sox too. I personally thought he didn’t favour one team or another.
My impression is that, when the Cardinals aren’t involved, he generally favors the home team. He seems to get caught up in the crowd reaction.
I do dislike joe buck. And on the fansites i participate in, pretty much everyone dislikes him and he gets ridiculed frequently. Many people say they turn down the sound. I’d rather take my chances on having the teams’ regular broadcasters work the games.
As bad as Joe Buck is – and he’s very very bad – this year was a real coming out party in terms of John Smoltz somehow managing to be even worse. The man is absolutely seething with resentment over all aspects of the modern game including analytics. He did not offer a single smart take the entire postseason. How they managed to find someone worse than Tim McCarver is truly beyond me.
Agreed. I don’t dislike Buck, but Smoltz was absolutely unbearable.
as a long time Braves fan, I would trade Smoltz’ pitching ability for him to not be in the booth. As in, he doesn’t pan out, never makes the hall, and thus isn’t seen as credible enough to be in the booth.
I keep getting the “you’ve already upvoted this comment” message, but I can’t stop myself from continuing to upvote it.
I certainly agree about his “takes” (ugh) but I still prefer him to Buck on the grounds that when he can stop grousing, he does actually know stuff about pitching. There were moments when he’d talk about the pitch sequencing, why a particular pitch was or wasn’t working, etc. that I thought — you know, this guy could be all right if he’d just stick to this.
I agree with Roger. They’re both terrible and they’re both way behind the times, but there are differences. Smoltz is more obsessively obnoxious about being anti-analytic, but it’s a matter of principle for him, I don’t have the feeling that he doesn’t understand the game. With Buck it’s like why is this guy even a baseball announcer? He’s like a game show host.
As a Yankee fan, I put the game on mute especially when watching my local announcers.
I don’t know about you, but watching guys strike out 57 times over the course of four-plus hours makes for edge-of-your-seat entertainment.
Two words: Joe Buck.
But seriously Fox Sports is horrible.
1. East Coast viewing times continue to be ridiculously late — particularly on weekends, when there’s no good reason not to have day games
2. 18-inning marathons don’t hold casual fans’ interest
but especially,
3. The ongoing employment of Joe Buck is a crime against humanity
I’m not staying up past 10-11pm for teams that I don’t care about, I have to work in the morning.
I especially don’t like the Red Sox too so I doubly won’t go out of my way to watch.
And the broadcasters don’t seem to like baseball very much.
A lot of people don’t like modern baseball very much. The slow pace of play, high strikeouts, the shifts, the disappearance of the stolen base, the constant pitching changes/bullpen parade, the increased game length – what’s to like in any of that? It’s like MLB is actively trying to make the game far less interesting and entertaining.
I first watched baseball many decades ago, back in the fifties. I still love and watch baseball, but games really did use to be a LOT more interesting and entertaining than they are now.
Not meant as a defense for Joe Buck, but the slow pace of games makes the announcer’s job so much harder when calling a game right now. With 50% more time to fill between pitches, the natural flow of a broadcast has changed along with the game itself, and announcers don’t know what to do with the time. A single pitch doesn’t give announcers much to analyze and talk about most of the time (contrast with football and the possibility of multiple replays between plays, and I don’t really watch football anymore), but they now kinda’ have to try and jibber about something anyway because it’s 25-35 seconds until the next pitch is thrown.
The old rhythm of “Ball outside, kind of missed his target there, has been a bit wild today, and now the wind up and the pitch” is now, “Ball outside, kind of missed his target there, has been a bit wild today, (other announcer) Sure has, might mean an early bullpen call today. Back in my day we just worked through wildness. (first guy) Yep, still getting the signs, and he steps off the rubber. ….”
There is definitely something to this. For me to enjoy announcing, it has to be either an ex-player who understands the game really well, or a pair of guys who can have amusing conversations with each other, or someone with a huge number of anecdotes. I was never a Yankees’fan but the banter between Phil Rizzuto and Bill White in the 1970s was great; I was never a Dodgers’ fan but I could listen to Vin Scully for hours and hours. Fox doesn’t hire knowledgeable people for the World Series because they know that great majority of the fans who are listening aren’t knowledgeable anyway, and a national broadcasting team is never going to have the chemistry of a local broadcasting team.
Johnston and aweb make great points. If you watch old games — say from the 70’s — you notice is how quickly most at bats were settled. Plate discipline was not stressed for hitters to the same degree as it is now and lots of poor contact led to a faster game. And pitchers wanted to go the distance if they could out of pride. Guys like Scully and Rizzo and Bob Prince and Ned Martin just were good company and a pleasure to spend time with. Joe Buck does not have that personality.
Does anyone know what the streaming numbers look like, if they’re counted in the above? As more and more people are ditching basic cable, I wonder if the numbers of people paying for MLB At-Bat are increasing to make up the gap?
Games are still too late and too long (I mean, we were all thrilled that game 5 ended before midnight, but we should ask for better than that). And I do think this series did lack a lot of reasons to tune in, ranging from people outside those markets not being thrilled to cheer on one side, to lots of Ks, to games not being all that close (apart from the marathon), to a lack of any real narrative to the series (2 big markets fighting it out). But it really wasn’t that far off from the average since 2005 or so when the dip in ratings really started.
Not only are the streaming numbers excluded, but so is the spanish language broadcast, which has been growing each year. As for the games being too late and too long, it’s interesting that one of the highest rated game portions was the post-11PM ET part of the 18 inning game.
Con Joe Buck anunciando en inglés, no nos debe sorprendir que el programa español sería mas y mas populár
Jijiji
It’ll be interesting to see some streaming numbers. The streaming experience really sucks in a lot of ways that it doesn’t have to, obviously as a consequence of the bizarre, obsolescent economics of cable TV. As a streaming-only viewer (and a hardcore enough baseball fan to want to watch it all) I found it a significant annoyance even to figure out HOW to watch the postseason, divided between three or more separate apps and logins (and attendant technical problems). I don’t understand why it’s so hard to get it all on MLB.tv and just split the ad revenue or the ad-sales rights among the parties involved.
I don’t think you could watch it live on mlb.tv without being outside the US and Canada because of blackouts, right? I didn’t try for the World Series, because it was on the local Fox network and the antenna did the job for me there. But I am pretty sure you can’t (legally) stream the World Series live anywhere. So any “streaming” numbers of people watching it live would be illegal streams and probably don’t count for ratings anyways.
I wonder how streaming effects it in different ways, though. For instance, my dad in Las Vegas, is blacked out of way too many teams (All 5 California teams and Arizona – WTF???). So he uses mlb.tv, and watches the Dodgers games from the previous evening in the mornings. So I wonder how many people, especially those on the East Coast complaining of late start times are just not watching it live, avoiding the internet, and then watching on their mlb.tv accounts the next day? Are those counted in the ratings? Who knows…
I streamed the playoffs from Canada using the At Bat app, so at the very least you could do it legally in Canada (I don’t think Canadian viewership is included in the ratings anyway).
Canada doesn’t have mlb.tv blackouts
Oh wow. I thought they would because of the Blue Jays. I guess maybe just in Toronto? Or maybe Canda really doesn’t suck like everyone keeps telling me. Either way, pretty cool.
No, the Blue Jays aren’t even blacked out in Toronto, which is great. I think Rogers (who owns the team) agreed to not enforce the blackout or something. Possibly because they’re also an internet company? Maybe someone else here knows more.
Baseball has become a localized, boutique sport. The NBA is a far more popular league, especially among younger people, and has crossover to non-white audiences, as does the NFL. The MLB isn’t quite as white only as golf or hockey, but it’s getting there.
If by “far more popular” you mean “gets better playoff ratings” then… sure. By any other metric NBA is still third fiddle in America.
being a fan of the Dubs sure helps me 🙂
now if we can get the A’s to follow suit
when you include the mindboggling Liga MX numbers, fourth fiddle
This is such a misinformed comment it has to be parody. Not only is MLB more popular by just about every measure but Finals/WS ratings, but to call baseball a white sport requires one to ignore the 40% and growing segment of the player pool that is Asian, Hispanic and Black.
Baseball…still pretty white:
Really inclusive of the people behind this study to exclude Asian-Americans.
It also adds up to 101%.
C’mon, this can’t be getting upvoted on a website where people are familiar with concepts of basic math.
82.8%, 8.6%, 8.6% – sum to 100.0%, round to 83/9/9
Which in this math teacher’s opinion is a misuse of rounding.
So they should make a chart that shows 0% Asians 0% Native Americans etc.?
That pretty much matches the racial percentages of the country. Most people in the USA are white, so why is it surprising that most of the people watching baseball are white?
While the player pool is not overwhelmingly white, the audience is.
Hispanics outnumber Blacks and baseball is almost as popular as soccer among that ethnic block. With the Hispanics being the fastest growing ethnic group, it should spell more popularity for baseball’s premier events, not less.
Baseball is absolutely no where in the same universe as soccer in terms of popularly among Hispanic people in the US. Let’s get real here.
Finally, a well balanced, comprehensive look at World Series ratings that doesn’t ignore important context. Good job! Still, I would argue that MLB shouldn’t be concerned at all because World Series ratings are not a good proxy for the sport’s popularity in this day and age. Local ratings are MUCH more significant. Still, if reasons are sought, the most obvious one seems to be the relative lack of drama throughout the postseason and in the World Series specifically, especially compared to the last two years. I also agree that Boston is not itself a big draw, and its market is actually smaller than Houston’s. Finally, I think for Yankee fans, of which I am one, the presence of the Red Sox is a deterrent. Although a negative rooting interest can be a draw, it doesn’t seem to work that way with Yankee fans and Boston. For that reason, I’d be interested to see how the ratings were in the NY DMA.
Full disclosure, west coast resident here, so the start times don’t impact me. But man, the strikeouts are a downer. Fewer balls in play just makes for a boring game. Fewer rallies, less thrill at getting that K in a critical spot. More relievers who can dial it up to 100 lengthens the game without adding any action. And less action means more Joe Buck.
I have no solution for it (well, I mean you could lower the mound and add the DH to the NL, but…nah, that’s little more than a band-aid). Just saying the current contours of the game make for pretty bad television watching.
What about shrinking the roster or limiting the number of pitchers allowed?
You’d break a lot of pitchers if you shortened rosters
Or the roster spots would go to workhorses that could throw 7 innings a start over the Tommy John Darlings who nut up to 101 mph every time out but can’t throw more than 15 pitches without needing to be replaced.
amen. and screw warmup pitches. If you want a mid-inning pitching change, hand over the ball and batter up.
I, too, enjoy watching less talented players play, because it offends people that the ball isn’t in play enough.
Guys just can’t hit in this era. They can swing really hard and, when they make contact on the singular plane that they swing on *every* swing, the ball is rocketed but they are certainly not “hitters”.
A hitter knows how to go the other way when necessary. A hitter understands choking up in key situations. A hitter understands when a slider away is likely to be thrown (Heyo EE!).
The FO mantra of TTO has destroyed the development of hitters. It’s just going to get worse as TTO continues to grow.
I think it is all connected. Specialized relievers can throw 100+ mph, and since they are almost always going to be better than a starting pitcher the third time through the order, starting pitchers can also throw harder for 4-6 innings. That is a big reason hitters “can’t hit.”
Require all pitchers to face 3 batters (or get 3 outs, in case of double plays/caught stealing) except for injury, where they must be placed on the 10-day DL. That would fix some of the problem.
Game action has no relationship to Joe Buck’s mouth action. The other night three batters came and went almost without mention as Buck rambled on about Roberts’s removal of Hill in the previous game. No sound, no captions, no problem. We don’t need him to explain what is going on, and he doesn’t anyway.
If the number of pitchers used makes the game more boring to watch (and it certainly doesn’t make it more exciting) then the rules ought to be changed.
Lots of good reasons listed. I consider myself a pretty die hard fan – was at game 5, would’ve been 4 but I wasn’t in town. I agree with pretty much all of the reasons in the comments and sympathize with the late start times – I work in CT but live in LA and had to watch a few games on the east coast – I don’t understand how they can do it.
I’d also add Dave Roberts style of managing – the absurd usage of relievers that seem to tack on 60 minutes of run time to every game and the frustratingly inconsistent use of platoons didn’t help. And I do agree with the Buck hate – but man, John Smoltz constantly insulting every Dodger hitter except for Freese and Turner – for 5 games straight – after 7 straight games of insulting them during the MIL series – ESPECIALLY didn’t help. Carving out 5+ hours to watch 20 commercial breaks in the final three innings – between John Smoltz talking shit – if you’re a fan of the team, why would you want to watch THAT? I certainly didn’t.
how do the platoons make the game longer i am confused
Sorry for the confusion – the platoon usage mention wasn’t in reference to adding delays- it was just in reference to his frustrating style of management 🙂
Using platoons likely causes the opponent to switch relievers, which adds 3-5 minutes.
I have taken to streaming the Spanish language broadcast to avoid the commentators; my Spanish is not good enough to allow me to get offended by grumps or poor use of statistics 🙂
Too late, too long, too slow. And now they have those lovely pop-in ads DURING AN AB?!!! At least that was a few seconds that we didn’t have to endure Buck and Smoltz.
I can only handle two or three innings per night these days.
Oh, and now I can watch the WS ONLY on my tv? No more MLB.tv games? Boo . . .
The irony is that they need those pop-in ads because the regular ads aren’t worth as much because viewership is down, which is at least partly due to the pop-in ads.
Joe Buck and Jon Smoltz – huge problem. Maybe not the only problem, but definitely huge problem. I think playoffs should have the home team’s local broadcast crew. Sure, you wouldn’t have the same announcers throughout the entire series, but honestly, ANYTHING is better than Joe Buck. I would rather listen to Fran Drescher and Gilbert Godfried call games than these two clowns.
Look at the Braves/Dodgers NLDS where they had Joe Davis and Jon Smoltz teamed up. Joe Davis was very obviously so much prepared for those games than Jon Smoltz was, or then either Smoltz or Buck were during the World Series. Joe Davis puts in the effort to prepare himself and it shows. He was talking circles around Jon Smoltz the whole time, and I don’t think Smoltz appreciated it very much, but too bad.
If you’re going to have commercials about how your organization is trying to be less of a grumpy old man (“Let the kids play”). Maybe that commercial shouldn’t end with a player who retired 15 years ago? I love myself some Ken Griffey Jr. I really do. But maybe not the best figure to use for this ad campaign? Yes, this isn’t exactly the World Series broadcast, but the marketing can get people into a certain headspace before even tuning in.
The commercials that came up in the middle of the game where the game went into the corner of the screen and there was a quick commercial then back to the game again. F*&$% that! Get rid of those. Because of those commercials, I will actively go out of my way to NOT use Duracell batteries, Geico insurance, or Youtube tv. Seriously, they pissed me off as a consumer enough that I refuse to use any of those products now. Opposite effect of what they want those commercials to have.
If I’m not mistaking, I believe they make the breaks between innings longer for the World Series so they can play more commercials on TV, no? If so, then knock that shit off. Shorter commercial breaks means quicker game action – shorter overall game time. I know the lure of all that advertising money is great and all. But at this rate, they’ll be losing advertising money soon enough.
Lastly, I don’t remember who was batting, but there was an at-bat (Ryu was pitching for the Dodgers) in game 2, where the batter called time and Ryu stepped off the mound at least 5 times between pitches. Come on, man. I get it’s the Series and the players want to be absolutely ready and all, but that at-bat was just ridiculous, and in general, these things need to be curbed. Maybe you award a strike or ball depending on whether excessive delays are caused by the batter or pitcher? I dunno if that would really work, but might help.
You’re whining about commercials? That’s the real issue? The Super Bowl has a ton of ads, not to mention a fair amount of Joe Buck, yet somehow manages to keep high ratings. Interesting.
Except that a fairly large portion of people watching the Superbowl couldn’t gave a damn about football and actually watch it FOR the commercials, because advertisers go out of their way to make commercials specifically for the Superbowl to try and appease those people. I don’t see anyone tuning into the World Series saying, “Oh boy, I can’t wait to see who makes the best commercial this year”. But you hear that a lot from people watching the Superbowl. At least I do.
Also, I don’t care what else Joe Buck calls. He’s a terrible announcer, and shouldn’t be calling any of the games in any sport. As an example, it was either game 1 or 2, when he was announcing the Red Sox defensive positioning and lineup during the top of the first inning. Can’t even get through the lineup without stumbling over his words! THE LINEUP… IN THE FIRST INNING… It’s not like he could attribute it to being tired because it was the 16th inning of an 18 inning marathon.
And yes, you want the game to last less time? Show less commercials. That’s one way of contributing.
People didn’t always tune into the Super Bowl for the commercials, which I think is part of the point. They’ve somehow cultivated a viewership that ENJOYS commercials.
That’s the trick.
+1 for fran drescher and giblert godfried
Joe Buck is so bad, I was actually recalling Joe Morgan calling games fondly.
“Joe Buck is so bad, I was actually recalling Joe Morgan calling games fondly.”
Oh, please. I can’t stand Joe Buck, but even at his worst he is still better than horrible Joe Morgan was at his best.
The “let the kids play” with Griffey Jr. was the best advertising I have ever seen in my entire life, for anything. That couldn’t have been better. I agree with you everywhere else.
I can see that on the Griffey thing. And the ad is really cool and one of the best I’ve seen MLB do that I can remember in my lifetime atleast all the way up until the end. The whole point of the commercial is to embrace the current young and entertaining players. I don’t understand the taking it back to 20 years ago right at the end. Again, totally love Griffey Jr. in general. Just don’t know if he was the right choice for the end of that advertisement.
I think it’s a nice nod to those of us who are diehard baseball fans of at least a certain age, and remember the utterly idiotic backward hat controversy. It is also to point out that if that’s your image of baseball things’ve changed.
I think the point of Griffey is that youthful enjoyment of the game isn’t a new thing and he was criticized for the same thing.
The reason is so simple: they start way too late. Why can’t they start at 6 or even 7? I might have a prayer of going to bed at a decent time then…
I just realized I didn’t watch 1 inning of the World Series this year. Alot of it has to do the start time of the game and I have to be at work at 4am most days. I still checked the scores and some of articles every morning, so I have interest in the WS, but I’m not sacrificing sleep for it. Especially if it’s not a team I’m not interested in. Oh, and the in-inning commercials….STOP IT
Not just in-inning. Mid-AB! “Low and outside, a ball to Puig it’s 2-1 AND NOW A QUICK WORD FROM MEGA MALE ENERGY SUPPLEMENTS!”
I’m surprised they didn’t include ads mid-homerun trot with the way some of these players like to hot dog it. Or every Machado jog to 1B when he hits a grounder to SS lol
“Isn’t that Frank Thomas?!”
The World Series motto: anything for money.
I’m fine with in-inning commercials if they would speed up the game by cutting back on ads between innings.
too many games on subscription channels (FS1, MLB network) and Smoltz’s incessant bitching. it’s really hard to like something when a person presenting it hates the product
That and Arod
ARod just seems so incredibly phony to me.
something else I’ll add, strikeouts don’t have to be boring. I see my girlfriend as a proxy for average fans, she really liked the statcast game. the analytics and charts really added color to the strategy that makes baseball great. commentators who like the game, can describe it, and visuals that accentuate it is intetesting.
hearing Smoltz and Buck basically say “durr durr why are they using their best pitchers in high leverage situations, I hate that the game has evolved beyond my IQ” is unwatchable.
Joe Davis and Brandon McCarthy please
Thank you. To me, the most interesting part of the game is the strategic matchup of pitcher vs. hitter. But I’m weird; I probably enjoy a good take on a tough pitch more than most.
I’m an early riser. 10:30 is the absolute latest I can go during the work week and starting the games at 8:15 barely gets me halfway through most of them. I consider myself a huge baseball fan but I used condensed game for most of the World Series.
I gotta be at work at 4am most days. I don’t know how many other people have to be up at least 2:30am, but the start time is my bed time. If it’s not my team, I’m not losing sleep. Like I said below, “east coast problems”, which is a huge demographic.
I watched as much of every game as I could, but John Smoltz constantly complaining about the present version of baseball was a huge turn-off. More people will watch the games if the announcers aren’t constantly bitching about the game on the field.
I am curious and too lazy to find… was the ALCS much better? Or was it same story as above?
I find it funny so many people are mentioning the late start time when (a) the start time hasn’t really changed in years, and (b) the NBA starts its finals games at 9pm EST.
Overall, I’m interested in the point that Boston may not be the big draw people assume them to be. Really surprised that last year drew better than this year even for Games 1-5.
Would be interesting to see athe ratings for these years if you exclude the home markets.
NBA playoff games are 2.25 hours max. Playoff baseball games are regularly 4+ hours
This years 29 MLB play-off games [extra innings games excluded] averaged 3:34. Not sure how you get “regularly 4+ hours”.
Now lets check NBA, again excluding any games that went into overtime. I only went to the conference semi-finals, but with a bigger post-season, that was still a larger sample than the MLB games I looked at.
To me, “2.25 hours max” means that the very longest games would be around that mark and it would be rare to exceed it. I suppose how frequently it should exceed it and still be “2.25 hours max” is subjective, but I get it as 81%. Depending on your subjective feelings, I’d do with a figure in the 2.5-2.75 hour range (putting it at 0-10% exceeding)
In any case I get an average of 2:21 — so the NBA games on average were about an hour shorter, but started an hour later. What was your point again?
You really must love to hear yourself speak. We’re talking WS ratings specifically, not playoff ratings. The World Series games were much longer on average. And this article is about WORLD SERIES ratings, not MLB play-off ratings.
People can have their opinion. They are allowed to say they didn’t watch the WS because it started too late. You don’t get to tell them that isn’t true – it’s their reason, not yours.
The World Series durations this year were 3:52, 3:12, 7:20, 3:57, and 3:00. Excluding Game 3, the average was 3:30. Including Game 3 it becomes 4:15.
That means you are expecting to have to dedicate 3 1/2 hours (possibly more) to every game, even IF there isn’t some crazy extra innings game.
Also, games 1-4 started at 8:09 and game 5 started at 8:15 (EST).
NBA Finals games were 2:38, 2:25, 2:19, and 2:19. They all started at exactly 9 pm EST, except game 2, which started at 8 pm.
That averages out to a little more than 2:25 per game, with the absolute longest being 2:38. That means that you know you can dedicate almost exactly 2 1/2 hours to the game and see the whole thing. Most games start at 9 but are over by 11:40 at the latest. And that’s all WITH game 1 going to overtime.
There is just no comparison.
I would reinforce your point even more – just as important here is the fact that the median and mode game lengths were basically 4 hours. In the World Series, I’d say you now have to approach with an expectation of the game going 4 hours (as 3 of the 5 did) and it being a happy occasion when it is faster.
This is a role reversal from times when games were routinely shorter and even a 4-hour game, as a result, had the feel of a true test of endurance, will, etc. I think this matters to the casual fan.
And I haven’t watched in years due to start times.
Why can’t we call it like it is? Baseball is irrelevant culturally. It’s stopped being about Sandlots and started to become about Travel ball and coaches. Yasiel Puig himself said he never idolized baseball players he idolized LeBron. The NBA has international stars like LeBron,Steph,KD; MLB can’t compete with that. Lets stop arguing about Streaming because NBA streams,reddit pages, facebook ect.. all dwarf MLB online presence yet the NBA ratings rose this past season and attendance are at all time HIGHS where as MLB is declining in every metic,(Ratings,Attendance,). MLB fans are old dying
Here’s my hypothesis. There were two teams perceived to be villains. I found this article from fivethirtyeight. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/america-has-spoken-the-yankees-are-the-worst/. The Red Sox and Dodgers are two of the 3 least liked teams in the country. I wonder if people didn’t tune in simply because they knew they would be unhappy with any result. Anecdotally, I did see some comments in baseball threads indicating that.
I didn’t watch a minute of the World Series, and this is the reason for me. No one to cheer for.
As a baseball fan who routinely defends the sport when people say it’s too slow, or there’s not enough action, I could barely watch the World Series. Every single pitch took forever. It was ridiculous how every moment was treated like a sudden death scenario. Top 5, runner on first, yes this is when the pitcher needs to step off, get a second series of signs, batter steps out, and there are 45+ seconds between pitches. Ball outside. Now we do it all again. Simple fixes are to actually enforce the rulebook and the pitchclock, and to eliminate warmup pitches on the mound for relief pitchers.
i agree with this.
im a lifelong red sox fan and a lot of my friends are too. i watched basically every inning of their playoff run. my overwhelming takeway from the postseason was: wow this baseball is bad. idk it just felt like a lot of bad umpiring, replay reviews, shoddy defense and baserunning, relievers (lots of them!) that cant throw strikes, announcers that dont want to be there and also the teams seemed kinda hurt and worn down. add in the long delays nate is talking about above and it just felt super unwatchable.
i would routinely text my friends during the games and check in with them and we all agreed that basically these games sucked. it was hard for me to watch AND MY TEAM WAS WINNING ALL THE GAMES! i would have beyond 0 interest in watching similarly played games if the red sox werent involved despite being a huge baseball fan whos on fangraphs multiple times a day during the season.
i also feel like NBA, NHL and NFL playoff games are much better, more fun versions of regular season games. now ofc theres bad playoff games in those sports too, but at least its seems like the same sport. playoff baseball morphs into a totally new, slowed down version of the game where we just wait and wait for something to happen. and when it finally does we then wait to see if the play will be reviewed. then if after the review its still the 3rd out we then get to wait through extra commercials.
if im a diehard baseball and red sox fan who found the postseason product borderline unwatchable then id imagine the average person who might otherwise consider watching the world series would be pretty down on it too. just a thought.
Simple fix:
1. Enforce the 30-second pitch clock stringently. Violations result in an automatic balk.
2. No more batter timeouts. Batter steps out of the box, it’s an automatic strikeout.
3. No warmup pitches on the mound are allowed. They are only allowed in the bullpen.
4. Pitcher changes are on a two minute clock. Violations result in a balk.
5. Any pitcher entering the game must face at least three batters before being removed.
6. Players can only visit the mound when the manager or pitching coach does; violations result in a balk being called. Those visits are also limited to one minute total.
I’d make this rule: A team can only make 2 mid-inning pitching changes per game.
I like #6, especially. And I think there might be a time where a catcher decides it is worth taking the balk.
#1 & 2 I would disagree with, but particularly for being a K/balk. Basically, if the pitcher has thirty seconds to get ready, so does the hitter. I don’t care where they stand while they do it. If they’re not ready, then make it a strike/ball and warn the offender if they don’t immediately return and ready themselves, they are forfeiting the AB with an out/walk.
#3 Limit it to 3-4 pitches. The reliever likely does need to make adjustments based on the condition of the mound. They should at least be given an opportunity to do so before throwing for real.
I feel #6 is a solved issue with the mound visit rule.
Surely TV execs can apply some analytics and see the rather obvious.
You’re talking about the same execs who put ads during at-bats.
“Surely TV execs can apply some analytics and see the rather obvious.”
Had you ever met any of them or gone to college with any of them – like I have and did – then you would not have written that.
I am an East Coaster with no problem staying up until midnight to watch an event I care about. It just so happens that I don’t care that much about the World Series.
1. Games start too late.
2. Interleague play detracts from the appeal of NL vs. AL.
3. Repeated video replay delays impair any kind of flow to the game.
All the above suggest the owners/commissioner are penny-wise and pound-foolish. Turning to gimmicky efforts to maximize immediate and short-term revenue are damaging the product.
Interleague play guarantees that folks in the NL have a chance to see guys like MIke Trout.
Granted, I get YES and SNY, so even as a Mets fan I can “see” Mike Trout when they are playing the Yankees on YES. But lets ignore that. I counted 33 games on ESPN, ESPN2 and Fox Sports 1, just through the end of April [including six Angels games!].
Plus dozens more games on MLB Network, so anyone who wanted to see Mike Trout without a local enough AL team to have an RSN, should have had little trouble doing so.
But there is something about getting to see your local team playing the stars from the other league.
We need to do away with interleague play. It was just another terrible idea, like the DH.
The other 3 major sports in the US have “interleague” play and that doesn’t hurt them.
My team plays 18-19 games against teams in its own division. I therefore know less about teams in other divisions. At the same time, too much inter-league play has diminished the importance of the World Series and the All Star game.
While the start times are tough to resolve, the length of game is an issue as is the prevalence of strike-outs. Certainly the length of games can be resolved with a few minor tweaks, some of which have been identified in these comments. But watching a guy strike out is not a lot more exciting than watching him walk. Was this the first year in which MLB had more strikeouts than base hits?. I think so.
Less mentioned among all of these ills, fans without subscription services lose interest when they can’t see the LDS and the LCS.
Baseball has a lot of issues and Manfred and the MLBPA need to be paying attention. You get the feeling that they are mostly interested in the current year’s revenue, not the long term good of the game.
There was never the feeling that the dodgers- had a chance
That’s because they never did.
1) How can MLB be surprised when they seem to fall over themselves to tell us how bad the game is every chance they get? Get the old guys out of the broadcast booths, they are poisonous.
1a) Market the game. It’s fun. Pimping homers, flipping bats, and throwing filth are awesome. Trout is basically Mickey Mantle reincarnated and the stooges at MLB just shrug. I don’t see any commercials featuring Lindor, Jose Ramirez, Betts, etc., either.
2) As a cable cutter, I’ll say that I had no idea when the games were. I imagine neutrals would have even less idea. They need to put up some ads online to increase awareness.
3) Having playoff games on TBS or whatever also prevents cable cutters from watching. Having the WS on FOX helps, but by then, neutrals may have already forgotten about the season.
4) Games are way too late. They need to make it easy for kids/families to watch.
The two most common reasons I see for cable cutting is “too expensive” and “I hate commercials”. Maybe you had different reasons.
(1) If $$$ was a big reason for you cutting, are you are complaining that MLB didn’t go out of their way to let the people who weren’t interested in paying for the services that are a major MLB revenue stream for them?
(2) If commercials was a big reason, you are mad that they *didn’t* litter your corner of the internet with ads?
This all said, if you really cared when the games were, you could have just Googled it, right? Sounds more like you didn’t give two craps and just want to make it sound like you tried to care but it was too hard.
“Pimping homers, flipping bats, and throwing filth are awesome.“
No. Those are childish, immature, and unprofessional acts. If we wanted to watch the NBA, we would watch the NBA. If the MLB is dumb enough to adopt these things it will lose its core fans en masse.
The curmudgeon stuff really is a big obstacle to baseball marketing itself. During Game 4 I watched as, at the exact same time, (a) Joe Buck was muttering crankily, disparaging Yasiel Puig’s homer reaction, and (b) Baseball Twitter was going nuts making funny memes out of it. It was by far the single stickiest thing I saw the Series produce on social media, with lots of non-fans engaging and enjoying it. Having seen this kind of thing happen again and again I am confident that the stuff you and Joe find “childish, immature, and unprofessional” is exactly the stuff baseball should be embracing and representing to outsiders as its joyful, emotional, dramatic side, the exact opposite of the grouchy, stodgy boredom that they usually associate with it.
It’s also interesting to listen to the Spanish-language broadcast to help imagine another approach. I happened to be listening as they introduced the Dodger lineup one time, and they said something like: “Yasiel Puig, who has had trouble with his maturity in the past but who plays the game with Caribbean style — the way it was meant to be!” This strikes me as exactly what I’d want an announcer to say to introduce him to a casual audience.
You’re definitely right, even if it’s not my style. I fall a bit on the curmudgeon side, but it’s not THAT big of a deal, and it’s probably great for marketing. Players need to show personality. There needs to be heroes and villains. We need to have reasons to care about other teams and players when our teams aren’t in it.
If the childishness and unprofessionalism continues to be encouraged, the core fan base of the MLB, which is older white males, will stop going to and watching baseball games and will start watching golf.
Baseball is supposed to be professional and dignified. Those of you who love immature and unprofessional behavior already have the NBA and NFL to watch; there is no need to ruin baseball.
Just a little food for thought. In the 1939 World Series the first two games were played in 1:33 and 1:27 and the combined time for all 4 games was less than Game 3 of this years WS. It seems impossible to play that quickly now but 9 inning games that last 3:52 (Game 1) and 3:57 (Game 4) are ending after midnight and are not going to help the game in any way, attendance wise or ratings wise. No team schedules a night game after 7:30 and that should be the case in the post-season. Is it worse for west coast fans to be inconvenienced or east coast fans to actually be unable to watch the game to its conclusion.
The White House is torn between blaming Colin Kaepernick or Joc Pederson
I personally think that the low ratings are in part a long term effect of the black out rules. A poor kid whose parents do not pay for the baseball package has a hard time rooting for the local team because he can rarely see games. It is way easier to root for football and basketball. That kid grows up having little interest in baseball that he can hand down to his kids. I get that tv deals are huge money for franchises, but kids not seeing a weekly local game kills long term viewership from many.
For those bitching about the late start times, I seem to remember with the game 163 day folks bitching about the games being in the afternoon.
There is a happy medium, you know.
My team has won three World Series in my life – 1960, ’71 and ’79; but does Pittsburgh have ANY chance of returning? NO.
Look at the spending of Bos and La-la! There is NO competitive balance. Two of the MOST popular franchises in sports, the Steelers and Penguins, exist solely because of the competitive play brought on by a salary cap. Bos and LA-la were foregone; how can other franchises compete?
The recent WS champion Kansas City Royals were torn apart by free agency. Most Americans simply cannot relate to the inexcusable salaries of these pampered ‘idiots’
Like most of you, I am a HUGE baseball fan, but I find myself watching far less baseball, even as I follow baseball avidly.
I will check the ESPN app for my local Yankees and Mets games (plus a check if other games have cool storylines going) several times each evening while doing other things, like being a parent, watching tv, etc. If a game is close/late, I’ll tune in for a while. If not, unless I have nothing else to do, it’s is hard to watch the bulk of a baseball game. The sport has slowed down sooooooo much. Even for huge baseball fans like us. Even during the World Series.
The next morning, before work and during breaks, I read a lot about baseball here at FG and at a few other sites. I follow lots of baseball writers on Twitter. I listen to the Baseball Tonight podcast most days during my workouts.
I do all this because I LOOOOVE baseball, but it is hard to watch the bulk of a baseball game anymore.
Exactly what I feel as well.
Baseball has become a sport that is much more fun to read about, noodle about, model, and study statistically than it is to watch play out. It’s almost like the actual playing of the game itself is a sideshow — kind of substrate for the higher thought fun that the game still provides, even as the actual play by play of the game becomes increasingly unwatchable.
Very well said. I thought I was the only one who felt this way.
The pace of play has to be addressed, and addressed seriously. Not with half measures.
Amen.
Start times… Less than 17% of the population of both the US and Canada live in the Pacific time zone, and less than 7% live in the Mountain time zone. If they want to boost viewership, make the games accessible to the large majority of the population. The Super Bowl does not start at 8:17 PM!
Time of year: Baseball was created by God as our warm weather game. But the World’s Series is played in late October?! The “boys of summer” should not need to wear winter clothes.
Publicity: The Super Bowl is treated as a national holiday. But the World’s Series gets a relatively low level of hype. A high-end marketing campaign could help turn the Series back into a key national event.
Buck-Smoltz: Most of baseball’s beloved announcers are long dead or retired, and nobody has replaced them. Joe Buck is no Jack Buck. Baseball is meant to be called by Gowdy, Harwell, Allen, Uecker or Scully. Even the post/pre-game crews (ARod, Papi, Pedro, Rollins) are hard to watch.
The postgame and pregame crews are impossible to watch. The level of unprofessionalism is appalling.
The world needs more Vin Scullys.
What time of year do you expect the World Series to be played?
September
Is the online viewing included in the ratings?
No need to overthink this one. It just wasn’t a very compelling world series to watch. The predominant story line going into the series was that these were the two highest payrolls in baseball. That narrative doesn’t exactly play well to a national audience. And aside from an 18 inning marathon, none of the games were particularly interesting. 4 duds in a series that only goes 5 games is a recipe for apathy from your audience.
Many of the response posted apply to the previous two years as well (announcers, commercials, length of games, beginning time of games) so they can’t really explain the low ratings of this year. Also, the series was still close for games 1, 2, and 4 and the ratings were low for those games as well. So the fact that the series wasn’t close (4 games to 1) can’t fully explain the low ratings either. A previous poster mentioned that the Red Sox and the Dodgers are two of the three most disliked teams. Maybe that helps explains things.
Now if we are trying to explain why things are lower than decades ago, that is a different story.
The past several WS had looooong-suffering teams and fanbases involved: Rays! Rangers! Royals! Mets! Indians! Astros! Cubs! This leads to two things:
1) huge local ratings (Cubs game 7 got a 52% rating in greater Chicago!!!!)
2) non-partisan fans tuning in for history.
This year, we saw two very successful franchises (yes, 30 years since last Dodgers title, but 6 straight NL West titles) and the 4 for the last 15 years Red Sox. Harder to tune in to root for the overdogs.
(I think the Yankees as an overdog still draws just because of the sheer soize of the NY market- way bigger than Boston, way more about baseball than LA)
I feel like 90% of it is just bad marketing. The MLB spends so much time and energy crapping all over itself. The World series announcers are complaining about the World Series the whole time. Analysts are complaining the whole time. MLB itself is complaining the whole time.
That doesn’t happen in any other sports. You tune into the NBA playoffs and you will hear Jeff Van Gundy saying “this is great basketball” more often than not, even if a team has scored 20 straight points or something.
When baseball actually invests in the concept of selling itself and making itself SEEM exciting, more people will perceive it to be exciting.
For me, on the east coast, it’s pure and simple…games start too late for somebody who has to get up at 4AM for work.
I did see that the NBA was pushing their start back a week next season after moving it up for the last two.
I doubt I was the only one who wound up flipping away from watching two teams I dislike to watch the local NBA team.
that would put game 1 of the World Series up against NBA opening night. The NBA moved it up 2 weeks.
I honestly just don’t have any television channels. No cable or direct tv, and I don’t care enough to get an antenna. I watch all my games throughout the year on MLB Network, but those were blocked out for the playoffs, so I watched them all later as the condensed game. I think a lot of people my age do that – at least, I know for certain a few of my friends did the same.
Here’s a very sad baseball fact that I had to look up:
Sunday night’s World Series final on Fox was outdrawn in the NY Metropolitan tv market on Fox by the 1-6 Giants vs the 4 – 2 Washington Redskins.
Same channel, same day, biggest tv market in America.
Manfred should probably be more than worried.
Why would the Yankee market want to watch a Red Sox game that doesn’t include the Yankees?
I don’t think that you understand just how strong of a comparison any national window Sunday NFL game is for ratings.
For 2017, 37 of the top 50 highest-rated TV broadcasts in the U.S. were NFL games. (I’ll post the link in a separate comment, since a link triggers moderator approval.) That obviously goes well beyond just the Super Bowl and playoff games. Last year’s Week 17 Sunday afternoon game between Washington and the New York Giants, which had no playoff implications (the teams came into the game at 7-8 and 2-13, respectively) had 22.4 million national viewers and was the #32 overall broadcast for the year.
Note: these ratings numbers are for Nielsen live plus same day viewership, which obviously skews toward events that people watch live versus scripted shows. The cutoff for #50 on this list is 19.2 million viewers, however, which is slightly above the total Live + 7 day viewership for the #1 rated TV show last year (The Big Bang Theory, at 18.6 million viewers). So that show would presumably have a few highly-watched episodes around the bottom of this list, though the average viewership of the top series falls off pretty quickly (the #8 show averaged 14.4 million viewers).
TLDR: if not matching NFL ratings – especially in the market of one of the NFL teams playing in a game – is regarded as failure, then basically everything else on TV should just give up. The NFL is a ratings juggernaut compared to everything else on TV.
Link that I mentioned above: https://adage.com/article/media/ratings-slum/311777/
For what it’s worth, I’m a huge baseball fan (obviously since I’m here) but I barely noticed this year’s series. I only watched about 5 minutes of Game 1 and none after that. The games simply start way too late for those of us on the east coast. I have to get up early and can’t afford to get invested in a game that could run well past 11pm. Also, there was zero novelty factor this year. The Dodgers were there last season and the Red Sox have won it seemingly every few years recently. Without a sympathetic team or a scrappy underdog, who are the general public going to cheer for?!? Television be damned, start the games while the sun is out and maybe viewership starts to tick back up a bit.
The Dodgers haven’t won the WS since 1988 and were the scrappy underdogs.
It would be a stretch to call the team with the fourth highest payroll a “scrappy underdog”.
If you haven’t won a championship in thirty bloody years and you’re playing a team that has won several of them recently, you’re the underdog. Payroll has nothing to do with anything.
Underdog? Sure, but primarily because the Sox were by far the stronger team. Any NL team would have been the underdog against them this season. So, sure, they were the underdog, but scrappy?!? That’s the stretch.
Sample size of exactly 1, but here is why I didn’t watch the World Series, after watching, listening to, or following on gamecast close to 100 games in the regular season.
1 – World Series now happens after other sports being heating up:
1a – NHL season (specifically, the Red Wings) is getting underway, so unless the Tigers are playing, I’m tuned into the Wings (or Leafs, or Habs, Bruins, Lightning, etc…)
1b- College Football is through the doldrums of the out of conference schedule and into the meat of the conference schedule.
1c- Many are really getting into the NFL and NBA and their respective fantasy leagues by this time.
2- I watched the wild card and Division Series, then inexplicably there was three days without baseball. Going three days without baseball allows me (and my kids) to really start getting into the other sports (see 1).
3- I watched a little of the LCSs, but then inexplicably there was ANOTHER three days off between the LCS and WS (see 2).
Some fixes:
1- shorten the season. Schedule some double headers, remove some days off, remove some games, I don’t care. Shorten. The. Season.
2- Playoff baseball should mimic the regular season. No days off within a series. If you finish a series early, you earned a few days off. Unless your opponent did too, in which case, let’s get to it.
3- See 2. Keep the momentum of playoff baseball going. Part of this sport is playing every day. Why is playoff baseball different? You want to cut down on reliever usage? Play every day.
Just my thoughts.
The problem with #2 is that it would lead to weird variance in the absolute worst case scenarios.
So you have fourDSes. Let’s say the AL is a pair of sweeps, both NL series go 5. The ALCS goes 4, the NLCS 7. If taking the “no days off” philosophy into account, too, this means the AL team is now waiting 5 days for the NLCS to wrap up. The largest difference you get now is 3 more days off (sweeping or finishing in 5 means your series finishes before the 2nd travel day) .
Also, baseball, if nothing else, loves its schedules.
Evo34: 5 comments with 1 rated positive and 4 rated negative. He may be East Coast, but he’s going full out Dodgers on this one.
Most Red Sox and Dodgers fans I know can’t name a player on either team. Not saying that is bad, just that those franchises have a lot of casual fans that don’t watch games. Personally I can’t stand Joe Buck and his criticisms and mocking my favorite players from John Tudor to Randy Moss.
If you know a Sox fan and they can’t name a Betts (likely MVP) or a Sale (top-5 pitcher on planet earth); or a Dodgers fan with no familiarity with a Kershaw or a Seager (homegrown stars both, Kershaw has been there a decade), then I would think the term “fan” may be a misnomer. Maybe they just like red or blue. (Or that insufferable Jimmy Fallon vehicle?)
Why can’t the reliever just run out there and start pitching? Like pitching changes kill the flow of an inning and sometimes I tune away and come back and the inning is already over. If teams are going to use more and more pitchers it would make sense to just have them show and go. This is an easy fix for the MLB that would dramatically speed up the game and prevent people from changing the channel in high leverage situations.
do they factor in streaming (mlb.tv) and radio? ratings data often excludes streaming views. myself, i listen to the radio feed for the games via AtBat.
This one is easy I feel (aka Death by a thousand cuts):
– Cord cutters are shut out and that is not a small group: https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/25/u-s-cord-cutters-to-reach-33-million-this-year-faster-than-expected/
– Announcers now are boring, all “towing the company line”. No dissent or disagreement from official MLB positions. Fortunately streaming offers a Stadium Sounds option. Where is the next Harry Caray?
– MLB arbitrarily changes rules (limited mound visits?). My friends who are casual fans who know a bit about baseball are left confused. Confusion does not help viewership.
– Instant Replay. MLB couldn’t possibly get the implementation more wrong. Audio from the review booth in NY to help understand the thinking that goes into a ruling would help. Really just anything but the confusing mess that is now Instant Replay.
Anyway, just a few thoughts.
My take on solutions to the list of “problems” with the world series, as an eastern time zone Dodger – who, by the way, saw all 18 innings, thankfully enjoying the ending, then slept and got up and went about my business, 2 1/2 hours later. It’s the World Series, folks.
A lack of star power. – What? Kershaw? Puig, Betts, Sale, and J.D. Martinez certainly have some interest to many for different reasons. If they aren’t “stars” that is an issue MLB/teams should be addressing with GREAT alacricty. I love Ken Griffey Jr., but he is not relevant to the younger generation. Is MLB lacking “characters”? Is that what you want? The notoriety of some NFL players (and their attorneys…)?
Length of games. – A given. Brutal. Stepping out of the box or away from the rubber is an instant strike or ball per the person causing the delay. Umpires given the support to call for the pitcher to pitch (let’s find a way to reduce the signs and sign-stealing issue) right way. Baez drives me nuts. Warm-ups by relievers on the mound have value due to differences in mounds, but maybe we could somehow get the stadiums to more exactly replicate the field mound with their bullpen mounds? If that too crazy of an idea?
A lack of balls in play (i.e. too many strikeouts). – While I abhor replay, a robo-ump would certainly clean up many facets of abysmal balls/strikes calls. And bring peace to the universe (or at least, to my mind). The mound height has been messed with in the past, maybe we need to re-visit that, too? Lower it a bit more to reduce velocity?
The abundance of relievers. -Still haven’t seen anyone discuss the Dodgers starting pitching staff, with their great ERA, not getting used enough versus their relief staff and their putrid ERA. Oh, wait, we don’t care about ERA…
Start time of games (too late). – Easy fix. Game time is the regular starting time at the home teams stadium, ratings be damned. BE DAMNED!!! Reward the home team with that little bit of advantage, as often as possible (as long as they are in different times zones – I know, I know)
The Dodgers’ lack of a local broadcast for regular-season games. – ????? It’s the World Series. They don’t know there is a game being played?!? Heaven help us all.
The use of cable networks like FS1 for early-round games. – Possibly a problem. But it’s about ‘show me the money’ and MLB has decided to prostitute themselves for the short-term fix of money, now. You paid for it, got the disease, and now you have to find the doctor with the solution. I hope it takes
Additionally, the announcers. Is it just us (old) folks are are there few announcers we really care for anymore?
I’d love to see the season shortened and offer, for abuse, the concept of scheduled double-headers on Saturdays or Sundays with a few Mondays being off days, then. Could save a week or two (three?) at the end.
Now get off my lawn!!!
Puig and Machado seem more WWE than baseball.
Idk how many people on this site are in the same demographic as me but I’m a 21 year old college student and the fact that the most important games of the series were being shown at night on the weekend of all the Halloween parties means that the younger demographic wasn’t watching as much as maybe they usually would. I know that when I went to these parties I was watching on a television because I am fun at parties but the majority are not doing that
I wonder if these results have any impact on Manfred, MLB ditching that idiotic blackout provision?
Length of games has to be a factor — 4.5 hour 9 inning games! As someone said, Fox needs to cut number of commercials and maybe up the price per each.
Also, absolutely essential: wireless headset communication between pitcher, catcher, and pitching/bench coach for calling the next pitch. This could cut out a lot of between-pitch time, plus eliminate the fear of sign-stealing.
I have the feeling that the 3-hour time difference between Boston and LA could be a factor. I would guess that the main audience of the World Series would be casual fans of the teams which are playing, people who would look at no more that one or two games during the regular season but by the time the World Series comes around they want in principle to look at every game (this is like 98% of Giants’ fans). From comments here it’s clear that both Red Sox and Dodger fans had particular problems looking at games in the other city because of the time difference. Red Sox fans couldn’t stay up for all of the games in LA because they ended too late and they were working the next day, and LA fans couldn’t get home from work to see the first few innings of the games in Boston because they started too early and they hadn’t gotten home from work yet. I would guess that another advantage which the Chicago-Cleveland series had was that the cities are only an hour apart.
People consume games differently than they used to, such as streaming, gameday and other apps. Do the ratings account for these methods, which didn’t exist when the Twins BEAT the Braves and are probably much more pervasive now than they were just one or two years ago?
The whole playoffs were like, where is the *#@! game now? Then the WS on free TV, Fox, and I almost gave up, because the first Fox channel I got was blacked out… fortunately, kept surfing and found it was on the OTHER one.
Announcers were awful, no drama, no analysis while two managers made many rather bizarre decisions at least by traditional baseball standards. The lack of continuity from the previous series was really vexing.
Here is my anecdotal personal testimony of why I did not like this World Series, presented for its educational value and general disparagement:
1. I did not like either team. As a Yankees fan, I do not like Boston. The Dodgers got my ire because (a) I was really pulling for Milwaukee and (b) any team with Machado and Utley feels like the baseball equivalent of a wrestling heel stable.
2. The games simply went too late for someone like me who lives on the East Coast and has to work. I actually stayed up 14 innings in Game 3 and I was basically hungover the next day, which certainly didn’t make me any more thrilled for Game 4.
3. Listening to Joe Buck is, was, and will in the future be a chore. He actually makes the Yankees announcers, both television and radio, sound like Vin Scully in comparison. If the game is good I can zone him out, but the games weren’t that good, other than Game 3 which was like trying to enjoy a marathon in real time. (I really wish we had Boston’s radio announcer. We got an inning out of him during an announcer swap and the man is excellent at his craft.)
4. From a purely emotional level, it felt to me that the Dodgers were doomed. In a prior article I described it as entertainment only in the sense that it might be interesting to see how the Dodgers were going to blow this game, and while generally accurate it was not especially entertaining. It was like watching the Mets.
Games are way too long and pitching changes boring.
I went to bed early and woke up early and watched the three minute highlight reel on MLB TV. I wish mlb would do like a 10 minute recap with a bit more depth – that would be perfect for me.
Too many strikeouts, too many pitching changes, too much time wasted on meetings at the mound, adjusting batting gloves, tv breaks, and talk. And, a lack of a compelling story line. Very strong teams, but somehow not very interesting.
I found the solution to these east coast late game times: catch a nasty virus. Since I did just that, and was up hacking and coughing until the wee hours, I quarantined myself in the basement. I couldn’t sleep anyway, so I stayed up and cast the games until whatever ungodly hour of the night. Yay virus!
A sample size of one, but I signed up for the MLB TV package. I thought it included the whole season, and was shocked to find out they wanted $15 for some playoff games, the blackouts were not limited to just the Yankees in NY. Could you imagine buying tickets on Broadway and getting told it’s $15 extra to watch Act III? Or a $15 charge to get off a plane after it lands? I was angered and done with paying to watch baseball. I’ll run my fantasy teams with online articles and occasionally catch a piece of a game at a bar or whatever.
That happened to me last year. I almost didn’t buy MLB Network again because of it, but I caved. Too much baseball to watch!
Jason Benetti and Mike Petriello as the World Series broadcasters ASAP, baseball wants younger fans and more viewers, start with these 2 who actually love the game and with Petriello get some actual statistical analysis that engages the viewer, 2nd all postseason games on FOX period and all World Series games have 1st pitch sane time as kickoff of Super Bowl (6:25 p.m.)
Anecdotally, fans care about their team as much as they always have, hence regular season support. But fans do not car for the occasion as much – hence switching off the playoffs as a neutral viewer.
With so much competition in the market these days, every avenue is struggling to convert the quick-switchers into eyeballs consistently.