It’s not clear to me if they are still offering something like that. When I google “Dodgers Family Pack,” I get a link to the below, which is:
Two “reserve-level” tickets (upper deck, I think)
Two $15 food/beverage vouchers
Costs $70
Is from the 2020 season (and looks like it was offered prior to COVID wiping out most of the season)
To be fair, the Dodgers’ web page does not yet have details for 2022 ticket packages (probably because the lockout just ended), so it’s possible that there will be a package like what you describe once they release the ticket sales.
They always hype the package during home games on TV, so I have to assume that this year won’t be any different. We always liked the deal for the huge break on parking.
Indeed. Baseball is far cheaper to catch a game than the NFL, NBA, NHL, or MLS. It’s not the cost of going that is hurting it relative to other sports.
And ‘being there’ has always been a draw of most sports. An NBA, NHL, or MLS game are FAR better in person. NFL may be the only better experience at home.
I do think pace of play is somewhat an issue, but the main problem:
A million times this. When you actively prevent marketing your young stars, you have a number of people who simply don’t care. Now sure, Mike Trout doesn’t really care to be marketing himself, but Tatis, Guerrero, Acuna are fun players with fun personalities, who should be marketed and celebrated. MLB has missed golden opportunities to market to younger fans by showcasing the young fun stars. This whole tut-tutting and unspoken rules has really made the game seem like it’s for old fuddy-duddies.
I think those are two separate issues, but agree either way.
The lack of national exposure, IMHO, is a significant issue. The reason the NFL is the world’s richest sports league has a lot to do with the fact that it’s basically a TV show. MLB seems determined to make it HARDER to watch baseball; now you have to pay for Apple+ to get some games. That is fine if your goal is to extract more money from the wallets of existing dedicated fans; it does not grow the fanbase.
As much as I generally think that the NFL (long rumored to stand for No Fun League) is broadly out of touch with its fans, as well, this is an area in which that league has at least started to take some steps.
They now allow non-spontaneous group celebrations after touchdowns
After years of fining players for wearing “non-uniform” cleats, they started a program to allow, and even encourage, players to wear unique cleats (usually for charitable causes) at certain points during the season.
They loosened up the rules on uniform numbers, giving most players more options for their numbers.
That’s a good point. The NFL and TV grew up together. I’m not yet 60, but my fondest memories as a spectator of major league baseball is listening to it on the radio while doing something else (driving, working, gardening, etc.). Even watching it in person requires the diversion of a companion to talk to during the game. I can’t sit down and watch a whole game on TV without something else to do at the same time. Then again, I can’t do that with football, either but I imagine it is a lot harder to follow with just a play by play. I’ve never tried listening to football on the radio (is that even a thing?)
It absolutely is – in the NFL, each team has its own radio team, and there are a few games each week covered by a national network (Westwood One, I believe). I listen to games on the radio sometimes – particularly Packer games, when they aren’t being carried on TV here in Chicago.
SiriusXM satellite radio has an NFL contract, and they carry every game; for each game, they usually carry both teams’ broadcasts, on different channels.
Anyway, listening to a football game on the radio is definitely a different experience from watching it on TV, but it can be done. A good radio announcer will help the listener visualize the game: “The Packers are moving from right to left,” “he was pushed out right in front of the Bears bench,” “he catches the ball in the back corner of the end zone,” etc.
FWIW, I’ve also heard basketball and hockey games on the radio, and those, I find hard to follow.
I hear your pain. The Dodgers have a limited number of games on channels other than FoxSportsWest. Since FSW is exclusive to Spectrum, that means I rarely get to watch games. How do they expect people to care about their team when they can never watch a game?
I liken that to the NFL’s Thursday night game on the NFL network, which usually a few tiers up on the cable packages. The nice thing about it is that it won’t be subject to blackout rules, which I hope is the first big crack in the dam.
But, at least with the Thursday night games, the league also simulcasts them on local stations in the two teams’ home market areas. So, if you are, say, a Packers fan who lives in Wisconsin, you’ll be able to see a Thursday night Packer game on a local TV station, even if you don’t have NFL Network.
My complaints about the DH or the size of the pitching staff or even something like hitters that can’t choke up and go against the shift is still pretty much all on the field stuff. It can annoy me, but that’s as a seasoned fan. I can argue about that sort of thing without disliking the game.
The crap about how hard it is to watch a game–I’m a Dodgers fan but live in an area claimed by the Rockies and Diamondbacks–means that there’s no point in my getting a team subscription because of all the blackouts thanks to crappy regional sports networks. Games, especially playoff games, start too late for families in half the country. It’s almost unwatchable on TV–there are obviously things you can look at live that the TV can’t show easily with having to pick cameras–made worse by the willingness of the announcers to let the visuals do all the work while they natter on about pointless stuff. I never want to see another in-game manager interview.
TLDR: Still love the game, hate the management and the media.
That’s only because the NFL is so damned popular that broadcast networks are willing to broadcast all the regular season games. Something no other sport can convince them to do. Heck, even ESPN, which is usually desperate for content has decided to show less nationally broadcast MLB games.
Even during “No Fun League” era, the NFL massively marketed its stars. Jerry Rice and Emmett Smith became household names. Deion Sanders was well known for being a flashy fun player during the no fun era.
I will note that these same restrictions apply to all non-NFL sports in the US. NBA has the same blackout restrictions and weird announcer stories and manager interviews. I get to watch the Hawks whenever they pop up on national TV (or if I go to a bar, which hasn’t been that often in the last two years) because I don’t have Bally Sports.
And it’s not a matter of someone not wanting to pay an overpriced amount for Spectrum. It’s that Spectrum is a cable service that isn’t available in much of Southern California. If you are in a Cox area, you are hosed. No way at all to get the games legally.
The reason pitchers tend to be much worse hitters than shortstops is not because playing shortstop is more related to hitting than pitching is. Rather, it’s because pitching ability is so overwhelmingly important to the position that even a guy who hits .120 can get a job as a pitcher, if he can pitch. By contrast, playing shortstop, while a big deal, is not enough of a big deal that a sub .200 hitter can be carried.
In general, there is an inverse relationship between the importance of non-hitting contributions of a given position and average hitting ability at that position, due to the dynamic described above.
That’s part of the reason. The other part is that pitchers don’t get nearly as much practice at hitting as other players. A starting pitcher only plays every fifth game, and usually not the whole game, so they don’t get nearly as many at-bats as most position players. (Plus, most pitchers don’t spend as much time taking batting practice and working on their hitting as position players do, since it isn’t as valued.) https://www.straightdope.com/21342145/why-can-t-pitchers-hit
