Baseball is Dying

[Guest Mets � Willets Point]

Not.

[metirish]

Good stuff

Olbermann cited an Orioles-Pirates series from the 70s. Sports Media Watch couched otherwise strong numbers for Game 2 on Saturday night as �baseball�s fifth-lowest-rated World Series game of all time.� No one talks about �NCIS� like that. But what if they did? �NCIS� was the highest-rated entertainment show in the fall of 2012. It got a 9.8 rating. In 1998, the highest rated primetime show was �E.R.� It got an 18.8. That�s 48% higher. Indeed, if �NCIS� were on in 1998 and got the same ratings, it wouldn�t have cracked the top ten.

I never looked at it like that.....interesting

[ashie62]

More programming choices equals diluted ratings...Lotsa good content out there...

[Edgy MD]

Well, lotsa content, anyway.

[stevejrogers]

All well and good, but again, it is still declining in important youthful demographics, and basketball apparently is charging right behind in those all important young demos.

[Guest d'Kong76]

Baseball is healthy and ratings are strong

Ratings for the post-season have been on the decline for years
and years ... even when the (all bow) Yankees are playing.

[seawolf17]

There are too many demands on everyone's time to sit down and invest 3-4 hours in a game, six or seven nights in a row (more or less) when you don't particularly care about either of the teams. The Super Bowl is AN EVENT, so everyone watches it. You can't do that with baseball.

I do understand the youth thing to a certain extent, though. They were particular about that in the Little League managers' meeting this spring. They said they were losing kids to lacrosse, which has more constant action, so they really wanted us to make sure that everyone involved was having a good time.

[Guest d'Kong76]

But it used to be you didn't have to have a rooting interest.
The World Series was a big deal. Not so much any longer.

[Zvon]

It's certainly possible that they can kill MLB baseball. But no matter how hard they try they can never kill the game of baseball. Follow a local minor league team and you get into just as much. If they don't allow things to de-spiral to a certain extent, baseball could die at the ML level. But baseball? Never.

[metirish]

Zvon wrote: It's certainly possible that they can kill MLB baseball. But no matter how hard they try they can never kill the game of baseball. Follow a local minor league team and you get into just as much. If they don't allow things to de-spiral to a certain extent, baseball could die at the ML level. But baseball? Never.

I read that Zvon in a James Earl Jones voice.

[stevejrogers]

seawolf17 wrote: The Super Bowl is AN EVENT, so everyone watches it. You can't do that with baseball.

Of course a lot of that is forced by the mainstream non-sports, and sports, media hyping it as the American Holiday in ways that shame people into throwing and attending parties, or at the very least paying attention to commercials (even though some are posted on the internet before hand!)

The Super Bowl has achieved the level where social media users proudly announce their attentions not to watch it, almost as they are trying to create a hipster movement about it.

You don't get any of that with the "event driven" media with series, probably due to the series nature of it, hard to create an event out of a Game 4, unless a sweep was on the verge of happening to cap a historic season, in any sport.

[Guest d'Kong76]

I don't think it's gonna be killed or dying anytime soon.
I get annoyed by people trying to tell me ratings are strong
in a headline when it's simply not the case.

[metirish]

Out of the four major sports I would think the NFL commissioner is worried about it's future, what with the brain injuries and violence .....

[Frayed Knot]

SteveJRogers wrote: All well and good, but again, it is still declining in important youthful demographics, and basketball apparently is charging right behind in those all important young demos.

If baseball were losing the youth at the rate I keep hearing that they're losing the youth for as long as I've been told they've been losing the youth ... then every baseball fan would already be dead.

[Edgy MD]

I disagree that the World Series can't be turned into an event. I think it can and they will try very hard very soon.

I disagree, on the other hand, that you can get just as into a minor league team. Affiliated ball saps your year-to-year commitment right out of you. I think affiliation did as much damage to the game's standing as anything.

[Ceetar]

Edgy MD wrote: I disagree that the World Series can't be turned into an event. I think it can and they will try very hard very soon. I disagree, on the other hand, that you can get just as into a minor league team. Affiliated ball saps your year-to-year commitment right out of you. I think affiliation did as much damage to the game's standing as anything.

too much time. Sunday afternoon is just such a 'free time' and a perfect excuse to relax, or get together with friends. Thursday Night football certainly isn't a much watch, and it's not because of the matchups. It's a culture thing.

And you know what, as awesome as baseball is, if you got a group of friends together to really really care about Croquet and got into it and followed the Swindon Mallets and invested the time together as a group and trash talked some of the opponents and all that, you'd be pretty into that as well.

[Edgy MD]

With regards to the day of the week, I'm not sure how that speaks to the World Series. They can start it on any day.

I think you miss my point with regards to minor league ball, or at least don't speak to it --- that affiliation damages your desire to maintain an investment and interest. The greatest player in the history of the Binghamton Mets spent three months there.

[Ceetar]

Edgy MD wrote: With regards to the day of the week, I'm not sure how that speaks to the World Series. They can start it on any day. I think you miss my point with regards to minor league ball, or at least don't speak to it --- that affiliation damages your desire to maintain an investment and interest. The greatest player in the history of the Binghamton Mets spent three months there.

didn't speak to it. I disagree, but we disagree on the business end of this player valuation and movement and the whole system and I didn't have anything new to add in that regard.

As to the turnover, I agree that hurts a little, but plenty of people get into college sports and while that's a little longer, it's very similar. If you invest the time to root for a team it'll stick.

Well the World Series is 4-7 nights and they're weekday nights. There are things you can't avoid. getting kids to bed, making dinner, getting enough sleep, daily chores like taking out trash or watering the grass.. it's a hell of a lot easier to block out 4-8 hours on Sunday by getting a lot of that stuff done the day before, or that night. That's why football appears to be more popular. But more eyeballs watched the WS for more time than watched say the NFC championship game.

events just don't happen over a week. maybe it's our attentionspan, I dunno. There's just too much other stuff going on in that time.

[Edgy MD]

The World Series games can be any day or time the league decides.

There's a movement both inside and outside MLB offices (Scott Boras is a proponent) to expand the World series to nine games and have the first two games at a pre-designated neutral site so they can spend months programming it into a media event, a la the Super Bowl.

Another possibility is maintaining the seven-game format, with a single neutral-site game launching the series. There are a whole host of possibilities to event-ize baseball.

[ashie62]

Frayed Knot wrote: SteveJRogers wrote: All well and good, but again, it is still declining in important youthful demographics, and basketball apparently is charging right behind in those all important young demos. If baseball were losing the youth at the rate I keep hearing that they're losing the youth for as long as I've been told they've been losing the youth ... then every baseball fan would already be dead.

They have largely lost African America...

[Benjamin Grimm]

I'm not sure that opening the World Series in a neutral site makes it any more of an event. You don't need to know the site in advance in order to hype the hell out of it. And if I wasn't interested in watching the Cardinals play the Red Sox in Boston, why would I care to watch them play each other in Honolulu or Memphis? And if the World Series was going to be played in my home town, I still wouldn't pay hundreds of dollars for tickets unless I knew the Mets were going to be playing, and I wouldn't know that until just a few days before.

I remember a few years ago MLB had those "Do your duty, Judy" commercials, implying that even if my team wasn't in the playoffs, I should still feel obligated to watch. I don't get the impression that that campaign worked especially well.

I watched One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest recently. It took place in 1963, but was filmed about ten years after that. There's a scene where Jack Nicholson desperately wants to be allowed to watch the World Series. Watching it now it seems so dated. I do recall when the Series was as big an event as the Super Bowl, but I really doubt that will ever happen again. A big part of that is that it's just one game, as was said above. Also, you have a half-time with some star-studded show. So many people who watch the Super Bowl do it because of either the half-time show, the commercials (stupidest reason to watch anything) or because they're at a party. I don't know how baseball can get that kind of vibe with a Tuesday night game. And since Game 1 or Game 2 doesn't decide a championship, it just doesn't seem as consequential.

[HahnSolo]

Edgy MD wrote: There's a movement both inside and outside MLB offices (Scott Boras is a proponent) to expand the World series to nine games and have the first two games at a pre-designated neutral site so they can spend months programming it into a media event, a la the Super Bowl. Another possibility is maintaining the seven-game format, with a single neutral-site game launching the series. There are a whole host of possibilities to event-ize baseball.

I have not heard this before, but I kinda like it? Staging WS events a la All Star Weekend is a good thing if you ask me. Biggest negative is that it will lengthen the postseason more (if they opt for the best of 9).

[Edgy MD]

Benjamin Grimm wrote: I'm not sure that opening the World Series in a neutral site makes it any more of an event. You don't need to know the site in advance in order to hype the hell out of it. And if I wasn't interested in watching the Cardinals play the Red Sox in Boston, why would I care to watch them play each other in Honolulu or Memphis? And if the World Series was going to be played in my home town, I still wouldn't pay hundreds of dollars for tickets unless I knew the Mets were going to be playing, and I wouldn't know that until just a few days before.

That in itself, no. But it's a step in pimping it out into an extravaganza that brings in curiosity seekers.

You may not care if they had a weeklong media frenzy and reserved every hotel room in the city for dog and pony shows and Russell Brand and empty press conferences and Carly Rae Jepsen and press passes for the Cooking Channel and the Fashion Channel and glitz and glamour and hundreds of women with impossible chests... but others would. And MLB could use the Super Bowl model to attempt to create a phenomenon where the media feeds off of itself, and the event becomes the event, and nobody could avoid it, to the point where there's actual anticipation and critical analysis of TV commercials. TV COMMERCIALS!

You might not have any more interest, but plenty of people would. Because people. Are. Stupid.

I'm not saying MLB should do this. I'm just saying that I disagree that it can't happen. MLB, I imagine, would very much like to make it happen. They just have to proceed with caution, lest they fail miserably.

My greater interest event-wise, as I've said before, is for a post-season awards show.

[Frayed Knot]

Ashie62 wrote: They have largely lost African America...

To some extent, sure.
And, in keeping with the theme of this whole thread, compared to the spot baseball occupied in the first half of the 20th century, they've "lost" (a word we can debate the meaning of) fans across various demographics, something o one is disputing. But controlling a smaller portion of the pro sports pie in this country is a far cry from saying that the sport is dying, a statement that gets repeated practically on a daily basis based on faulty or limited information by people who don't like the sport in the first place and are paid to promote others.

[Guest d'Kong76]

World Series rated 17% higher this year ... go figure.

[Guest Mets � Willets Point]

Thing is I'd wager more people are watching baseball now than when it was "The National Pastime". More teams, more ballparks, more sellouts, greater annual attendance, more tv coverage, more internet streaming, more international audience, more officially licensed products sold, et al.

I think people need to think of baseball success in terms of "the Long Tail" rather than "the Blockbuster."

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

I'd agree with that. And lots of runway still given underexploited global markets and as Edgeward suggested, revisiting the marketing of events like the World Series.

The whole idea of MLB as a brand unto itself is still relatively young, and will be one of Bud's big legacies.

[Edgy MD]

Full disclosure. Our new VP for marketing was in the marketing department of MLB for 10 years, so maybe I can take him out for a beer and get him to dish about whether MLB viewd their market position as precariously as the doomsayers seem to, or about what's next for them, marketing wise.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Mets � Willets Point wrote: Thing is I'd wager more people are watching baseball now than when it was "The National Pastime". More teams, more ballparks, more sellouts, greater annual attendance, more tv coverage, more internet streaming, more international audience, more officially licensed products sold, et al.

No doubt about any of that. When I was a kid, I could buy a Mets ticket in the infield field level a few days before the game. Today, those are season tickets owned by entities that wouldn't part with their seats even if the Mets went 0-162. Back then, teams were probably thrilled to draw 20,000 fans to a single game. Just look at what teams are worth today. Values have skyrocketed, even accounting for inflation. And the networks wouldn't be paying what they're paying to broadcast the game unless lots and lots of people were watching.

[Benjamin Grimm]

Sure. Baseball is still hugely profitable, and has many many fans and/or followers. It only looks weak when you compare it to the prominence it once had in American culture. That's gone forever (most likely) but it doesn't mean that baseball is doomed. Far from it.