Nationals vs. Orioles. Least marketable World Series possible?

I don’t see how a post about how the media prefers the Yankees in a thread about media markets could possibly be considered threadshitting.

Pretty much any WS involving East Coast teams is meaningless to me. Wash/Balt wouldn’t even ping my radar. If the NLWest is involved, I’ll watch. Otherwise there are reruns of Big Bang Theory I haven’t seen more than 60 times.

Kansas City vs. Pittsburgh would be the worst matchup of teams that are ‘in’ the playoffs as of today, but I think that KC-Milwaukee would be even worse. Oakland vs.either of those two NL teams would be only marginally better, since nobody outside Alameda County is actually an A’s fan.

Let’s stop the mild Jr Modding from some of you and the slight hijack about what is or is not threadshitting. If any of you want to discuss rules or have questions about them, feel free to make a topic in ATMB.
On the other hand, if you want to call out others over their posts or behavior, use the Pit…

…but let’s get back on topic.

If I’m not mistaken the highest rated World Series of all time was 1980, Phillies vs. Royals. Current World Series ratings are falling faster than an Iraqi fighter plane.

I don’t think MLB really has to worry about where the teams are located so much as where the viewers are going, which is generally “not watching playoff baseball.” When baseball was big on TV small market teams drew big numbers all the same.

In any event, I don’t see why Washington-Baltimore would be the worst possible matchup when there are smaller markets.

Viewers are mostly going local… however, I think it’s silly to compare ratings to the NFL. The NFL is something very different than anything else. Ratings of everything are falling and baseball isn’t some strange transcendent sport like the NFL - it makes more sense to compare it to the rest of the ratings and to other sports like the NBA, NHL, etc.

I can tell you from experience that Washington fans are the type who turn off the game if the Nats/Caps/Wizards are behind after 2 innings/periods/quarters. Worst sports fans of anywhere I’ve ever lived. They leave the Skins games on though because it gives them something to complain about every 7 days.

Balitmore is just not that interesting of a team and the market there IS small. I don’t think regional population is the best indicator of market size IMHO. Florida is a great example of this. 4th most populous state but you can’t pay these guys to sit through a baseball game.

Of course it’s worth pointing out that it doesn’t take all that much for a team to become much more interesting. Just add a big comeback or a couple of extra-inning wins or a surprise compelling story or something like that and there you go.

I don’t know that ANY of the possible World Series matchups would draw stellar ratings, and it has little or nothing to do with big vs. small market teams.

Suppose the World Series pitted the Angels against the Dodgers. Both are good teams from a big market, both have some very well known and marketable stars (“See Mike Trout batting against Clayton Kershaw!”)… but baseball is no longer a national sport. Which means that, in my opinion, the ratings wouldn’t be much better than for a Royals/Pirates Series.

People in New York aren’t baseball fans, for the most part- they’re Yankee or Met fans. Bostonians aren’t baseball fans, they’re Red Sox fans. There are loads of Phillie fans, Cub fans, Cardinal fans, et al., but there aren’t many pure baseball fans any more.

Which means that, in most markets, once the home team is out of the running, local viewers lose interest in the rest of the post-season.

It’s different in football- people who had no ties to Indianapolis or New Orleans still watched them play in the Super Bowl because it promised to be a great game. But people who aren’t fans of the two teams that end up in the World Series won’t feel compelled to watch, no matter which teams make it.

I’m not sure I buy either of these arguments.

First of all, baseball teams are interesting directly proportional to how many games they win. Baltimore is going to interest many people if they go deep in the payoffs. With few exceptions nobody finds a loser interesting and nobody finds a winner boring.

If Baltimore and Washington fans have not been going out of their way to watch baseball, it’s because it’s just in the last few years their baseball teams have given them any reason to watch. I’ll believe those are bad baseball markets if they don’t respond to winning - but in fact they have. Orioles attendance jumped dramatically in 2012, when they won something, stayed about the same last year when they were hopeful of winning, and is up again this year. Washington attendance went from among the worst in the NL to middle of the pack once the team started winning; it’s now about 40% higher than it was when the Nationals were boring and dreadful. People don’t really care THAT much if Adam Jones or Jayson Werth are interesting ballplayers. They care if the team can win.

Not only has Nats attendance climbed, but so too has it’s ratings on the radio:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/dc-sports-bog/wp/2014/07/16/nationals-radio-ratings-are-surging-this-season/

Oddly, Nats TV ratings are reported to have dropped this year. Some have suggested that the TV ratings drop is inaccurate and related to the lawsuit between the Nats and Orioles (who own the TV network the Nats games appear on).

I think I’ve read that baseball ratings are best when there is a west coast team and an east coast team playing in the WS, probably not great ratings when the two teams share an airport.

Saturday night’s ESPN game is Royals/Tigers in the middle of a pennant race. It’s not the World Series, but I’m interested to see what the ratings are, compared to whatever typical New York/LA game they usually have on.

Will Machado be healthy for the playoffs? Does he “move the needle”?

I didn’t compare MLB to the NFL.

I agree they are quite different. The NFL is a TV show first, and a live spectator sport second.

I thought FOX owned Saturday baseball. Isn’t ESPN all NCAA football, all channels, all day?

He’s done for the season. I believe he would.

Well, either there are other cities that have New York-class restaurants or there aren’t.

If there aren’t, then there’s NYC, and that’s it. But if there are, DC certainly is one of them. Doesn’t matter if you like Ethiopian or Vietnamese or Salvadoran or what, the DC area has good restaurants of that sort. And if you want a restaurant where you can pretend you’re a lobbyist and have a good steak and a martini, we’ve got those too.

I know people seem to forget about them even though they’re still ahead of the Yankees in the Wild Card hunt, but of the teams still viable for the playoffs, I think the Indians are probably the least interesting to a national audience right now. Especially when you consider they can’t even draw in their own stadium when they’re in a division race.

Pit them against, say, Milwaukee in the World Series, and I think you’ve got a guarantee that no one outside of those markets and their random fans around the country will care. The only compelling storyline would be the miracle that they both got in.

Did you see that map that shows fan preference by zip code (based on Facebook profiles)? A’s fans aren’t a majority anywhere in the country, including their home, Alameda County (2nd to the Giants).

The Mets are in a similar situation.

Is it? That’s probably even better, as FOX has the World Series as well.