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Football Beats Baseball
- Thread starter TheBigA
- Start date
Game 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
Texas won the series last night in Game 5. They won all their road playoff games going 11-0. Impressive stuff, but very few people watched. No surprise that this match up failed to find an audience.
Baseball needs to rethink its current playoff format. Too many average teams get in. Texas earned their championship, but the playoff format is bad. Teams that get a bye in the first round are actually being punished. It's unnatural to have too many days off...
Texas won the series last night in Game 5. They won all their road playoff games going 11-0. Impressive stuff, but very few people watched. No surprise that this match up failed to find an audience.
Baseball needs to rethink its current playoff format. Too many average teams get in. Texas earned their championship, but the playoff format is bad. Teams that get a bye in the first round are actually being punished. It's unnatural to have too many days off...
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I enjoyed one too many adult beverages to make a drive to the beaver last night. It will happen, for sure, when I make the trip to Arlington for the parade and associated festivities.
Thanks, radiofan! It's been a long time coming for those of us who are lifelong fans of the team. 😀
Conclusion: This year's World Series was the least-watched ever:
www.espn.com
World Series was least-watched Fall Classic in TV history
Nielsen and Fox said Thursday the World Series averaged 9.11 million viewers, less than the 9.79 million average from the 2020 series.
No Giants or Mets either, and the Cardinals were one of the worst teams in baseball. The big problem is ESPN. Sunday Night Baseball has prime time all to itself for a couple of months in the summer (after NBA playoffs, before NFL season) but the Disney bean counters know that only the national brands and super-sized markets draw enough eyeballs to satisfy the advertisers, so the "off-brand" teams like the Rangers who are having surprisingly good seasons don't have a chance of getting a game.
I'll add that MLB Network does a good job of getting every contending team plenty of TV time, but its audience is almost completely super-fans of baseball, not the casuals whose default setting, so to speak, for sports if the local team isn't playing that night and nothing's going on on the OTA networks is ESPN.
We'll see how many Sunday night ESPN games, or Saturday afternoon Fox games, the Rangers and D'backs get next season. I'll guess a few more than in previous seasons, but not by much. Maybe 3-5 games each, but that's about it. Not sure what the limit is per team for either network, though.
But isn't that the problem facing just about everything today? That the audience is being splintered in so many ways by so many things? Why shouldn't baseball also suffer from the lack of attention? Every day I read of people wanting to drop ESPN from their package because of the cost. Cord cutters are dropping cable so they can get packages that don't have sports. It wasn't that easy to avoid the World Series when it was on NBC and there were only three networks. Now, it's one of 500 choices.
I read someone complain that they couldn't hear the World Series on the radio in their town. The reason was because the ESPN Radio affiliate was broadcasting the city's local hockey team. That wasn't such a problem when the companies that owned the networks also owned the radio stations, and could force them to run the network.
OJ Simpson's BFF complained about the having show the 97 series, The Golden Girls beat game 1 of the 85 series
I posted that above. It's not surprising that ratings were low compared to previous years. I'm curious what the ratings looked like in places like Boston, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, etc.. Arizona vs Texas just wasn't a match up that would generate interest in many areas. Teams like the Red Sox, Cubs, Yankees, Cardinals and some others have large national followings.Conclusion: This year's World Series was the least-watched ever:
World Series was least-watched Fall Classic in TV history
Nielsen and Fox said Thursday the World Series averaged 9.11 million viewers, less than the 9.79 million average from the 2020 series.
Baseball just has to face the facts. The sport is not trending up in popularity like Football...
Even football's TV demos are trending upward. The average NFL viewer is just a couple of years short of 55, the dreaded year they'll become poison to advertisers. Many younger viewers don't want to watch 3 1/2 hours of football at one sitting, including the mind-numbing studio halftime show, which seems much longer than its allotted 20 or so minutes when you're actually watching it. They either use NFL Red Zone or get updates on their phones while they're doing something else. Team sports as a whole are stagnant to declining in popularity, except for soccer and maybe hockey. Baseball is just declining faster than football. Those young folks who'll be tomorrow's 25-54s are gaming, not spectating.
Fantasy football seems to be more important with 18--40 year olds. They only care about the players on their fantasy rosters rather than watching a full game. It's no accident that the networks often switch out of blowout game to a closer one. They are desperate to try anything to keep viewership high.
The NFL has strong ratings, but I agree that older men make up the majority of viewers. The younger ones are more likely to catch snippets of games or watch the 10 minute NFL You Tube recap highlight videos...
The NFL can't win that battle. And by switching away from blowouts, they only anger another segment of their audience -- those who can now, and do, bet on football legally. While the game may be lopsided, the over/under may still be in play, or a couple of late touchdowns by the losing team could give that team a "backdoor cover" when it comes to the spread. All the more reason to depend on the phone or a live highlights channel for updates.
I'm curious if NFL ratings every fully rebounded following the drama surrounding players kneeling for the National Anthem a few years back? It started when a few players knelt in an effort to speak out about racial justice issues, the US president at the time badly twisted the whole situation and claimed (quite incorrectly) that they were intending to disrespect our country's military and started his "get that SOB off the field" nonsense which riled up the political right, the kneeling spread to full teams, then other sports and ultimately, ratings and revenue for the NFL tanked, team owners held a number of meetings to try and figure out how to deal with all of it, but I also remember ratings took a solid hit. Did they ever fully rebound?
Baseball IMO is in for more/bigger rough times ahead. Attention spans and availability of casual free time have greatly decreased. It's difficult to expect today's fans to sit through 162 regular season games, each one lasting about 3 hours each, with teams having games seemingly most every night of the week throughout the season. Things like the pitch clock have helped, but...
Baseball is also in large part about Americana and tradition and even mystique. Stories about grandfathers taking their sons to their first game and sitting in the stands with roasted peanuts and a hot dog while talking about the greats of the game, then fathers doing the same with their own sons. Late 80's and early 90's movies like Field of Dreams, A League of Their Own and even the Major League series only built upon that. However, when I've gone to games over the past few seasons especially, I just don't see the attendance that I once did. Many teams try every scheme and gimmick and try every theme night idea they can to try and get butts in the seats. Stadiums openly advertise free and fast WiFi and oftentimes you see a bunch of smartphone and tablet screens aglow during the games as bored fans or younger folks with shorter attention spans turn to something aside from the slow-paced game before them to hold their attention.
Pretty sure attendance was up for all but two or three MLB teams this season. Even Oakland saw an increase! The last update I saw was in August, so maybe a few other teams sunk below the line in the final month, but still, this was a very good season for MLB attendance-wise.
As for the patriotism/Black Lives Matter issue, there are people who aren't following the NBA and MLB anymore over the same thing, as well as "pride nights" in all sports. I have no idea if they represent long-term trouble for those sports or just a right-wing or racist or homophobic or Bible-thumping fringe that will fade in time as they find other windmills to tilt at.
But was that increase in attendance about A's fans hoping to show support to the team so they'd reconsider a potential move to Vegas?
While I do recall a bit of a ruffle this past baseball season about Pride Night offerings, and one team/game in particular had groups of people show up who were vocal on both sides of the issue, I don't recall that rising to the same level of the weeks-long drama about kneeling for the National Anthem a few years back. Having the gays at a game is one thing, but you mess with the flag and....well....'Murica! - Where you stand for the flag and kneel for the cross!!
Of course. But the other increases were legit. The Rays were up a lot, but they started from such a low 2022 figure that their 2023 attendance is still considered poor.
Scroll down to the second chart here. It gives 2023 vs. 2022 attendance figures by team. Only four teams recorded declines -- the Nationals, White Sox, Cardinals and, by only a few hundred per game, the Dodgers. MLB as a whole was up about 9 percent.
2023 Major League Baseball Attendance & Team Age | Baseball-Reference.com
Check out the attendance and team age stats for all the Major League Baseball teams and players on Baseball-Reference.com
www.baseball-reference.com
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Interesting to see that data for sure!Of course. But the other increases were legit. The Rays were up a lot, but they started from such a low 2022 figure that their 2023 attendance is still considered poor.
Scroll down to the second chart here. It gives 2023 vs. 2022 attendance figures by team. Only four teams recorded declines -- the Nationals, White Sox, Cardinals and, by only a few hundred per game, the Dodgers. MLB as a whole was up about 9 percent.
2023 Major League Baseball Attendance & Team Age | Baseball-Reference.com
Check out the attendance and team age stats for all the Major League Baseball teams and players on Baseball-Reference.com
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