Today, baseball is nowhere close to being America’s top sport. It’s not even close to the top five sports in America. Baseball is relegated to third among all adults, and its place among kids is so far down that it’s getting beaten by esports.
This year, World Series viewership will likely not greatly exceed 5 million people – or three-quarters of what it was 30 years ago. It certainly won’t come anywhere close to the approximately 30 million to 40 million that watched the Fall Classic during the late 1970s and into the 1980s.
Part of what kills baseball is what kills accessible streaming and cable are dividing audiences. Those issues, however, don’t tell the full story.
If you look at the postseason there isn’t a game on Sunday, which will be an off day for the teams to travel. This isn’t some fluke or mistake. Baseball is actively trying to not play on days when NFL games are. Pro football is a powerhouse in ratings that baseball doesn’t want to lose to.
Another thing that kills baseball is the lack of offense. This year the average time of watching a game on TV is 3 hours, 40 minutes of which are commercials, 10 minutes of which are just the players standing around, and only 18 minutes of the ball being in play.
MLB created new rules which I love and as a die-hard fan who watches almost every Astros game, I really appreciate that the games don’t take up a whole afternoon. But they need to still make new rules. The amount of games they play is too much, 162 games is the most of any professional sport, and then fans are done when the postseason rolls around.
I believe that they should half the amount of games to 82, they should move the pitchers’ mound back, and they should make the bases closer. This will lead to more offense and more athleticism needed in baseball.
