Actually, recent trends with respect to MLB attendance indicate that attendance is dropping. Cite.
Do you know what I think has changed for baseball? People are much busier now. Who has time to follow a 162-game season these days, other than retirees? People have many more things going on in their lives competing for their attention. Heck, I know die-hard baseball fans who don’t even keep up with all of their team’s games.
On the other hand, I pay close attention to every single Patriots game, but there’s only 16 regular season games.
Your cite indicates that the recent drop in attendance is almost toally due to the smaller ballparks the Mets and Yankees now play in. Smaller stadiums has been the trend for many years now, so I think it’s still to safe to say baseball is as popular as it’s ever been (attendance-wise).
If Baseball is just as popular, why are teams like the Yankees downsizing thier stadiums? They do it so they can sell out with a smaller attendance base. Smaller stadiums are the trend because they don’t want so many empty seats being seen on TV.
A smaller seating capacity is required for the luxury boxes that all new stadiums have. They bring in a lot more money than a comparable number of regular seats.
You read my mind. Baseball games are so devalued by the season length that no one bats an eye at a single game result and results are only valued in game streaks. Why would I ever care about someone hitting a home run, or striking out a few batters? Shorten the season to 20 games and make them matter.
Similar with basketball. Why would I care about a dazzling play that contributes a whopping 1% to the score total?
In both of these sports, it’s common for coaches to rest the premier players and not even try to win many individual regular season games if they risk stress to their team over the long term. As a fan, the fact that I’m paying a high ticket price to see pro athletes at the top of their game just coast or only put in token appearances is unforgivable.
It’s actually in decline. Not arguing, but anytime you read about Jimmie Johnson his critics argue that ever since he started his dynasty (5 in a row for Cups) NASCAR has been declining in popularity.
One has to to be careful that there is an actual decline vs a decline in rate of growth, but it does get rammed down fans’ throats over and over: It’s declining. [Now, it simply might be leveling off from it’s peak, and not in danger of falling very far (and I don’t think it is).
*The SportsBusiness Journal this week published a report that shows NASCAR has lost nearly a quarter of its television audience over the past four years – including a huge drop (around 25 percent) in the favored demographic of 18-to34-year-old males.
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Ratings for the season finale – where Johnson came from behind in the points standings to steal the title away from Denny Hamlin – were even down eight percent from last year, from 3.6 to 3.3.
Don’t forget scarcity: you can charge more money if you have fewer seats. Teams can and do raise ticket prices anyway, but this is also a factor. Luxury boxes are so much more profitable than regular seats that it’s well worth it to lose some seats and make more room for the boxes. And I think the new Yankee Stadium and Citi Field have more concession stands and other amenities, which also means more money for the teams.
All these attendance figures have to have the recession factored in, or comparisons in-sport and between-sports are meaningless. A small but significant part of the NASCAR decline may be Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s increasing inability to win anything or contend for the Chase-I used to root for him, until it became clear that God never gave him the grey matter that He gave a rock.
You do realize you are proposing massive changes to the very nature of both sports, right?
Endurance matters, both within a season and within a game. Baseball was basically built on that concept - “we do this every day” and what-not. That’s why the post-season was historically so small (only the World Season) - the long regular season is what matters, not whoever gets lucky and wins a few games at the end of the year.
I also find it interesting that the “resting your best players” thing happens much more often in the NFL, even with a shorter schedule (not to mention the ridiculous preseason).
As to the OP, I think the NHL will scale back some and the NFL has the biggest potential for a massive drop-off, just because of how big it is right now and the combination of labor and injury issues on the horizon.
Actually I quite like tennis, but don’t see it making a comeback. And while I’d love for soccer to take the NFL’s place in America, I don’t see it happening.
It doesn’t need one. Internationally it’s never been bigger. In terms of TV viewership at least, it doesn’t do as well in the U.S. as it once did because it’s not dominated by Americans (and because there is more competition from other sports and such). The sport itself isn’t in any danger.
MLB has done everything it can to hurt the sport. The severe lack of any pretense of parity (i.e. salary caps) means that if you are a mid or small market team, you get one, maybe two seasons with a shot before your star goes to NY or Boston. A season that is too long and the inconsistant scheduling during the playoffs. Games are boring with all of the stepping out of the box and specialized(i.e. one batter) pitching, etc. The number of teams is way too many and quality has suffered.
In the last four years, 18 different teams have made the playoffs and only one (the Phillies, not a marquee team by any stretch of the imagination) won more than one World Series.
And the time for an average baseball game is shorter than in years past and is much shorter than the average NFL game.
One might be tempted to point out that in a league with a salary cap (the NBA) there have been only 5 different teams to win the championship in the last 10 years, none of them small market, and half of them by the same team (LA).
MLB, conversely, has only had one repeat winner since 2000.
I agree with you, but as a fan I couldn’t care less about team endurance. Team roster strategy for season endurance is boring to watch as a fan, especially when it dilutes the quality of performance and game play being put on the field.
I don’t know the solution, but the reality is that I am only willing to spend premier money on “games that matter”, such as playoffs. Otherwise, if I want to enjoy the sport for the sporting aspect, my money is better spent on minor leagues and college games. I won’t pay just for the honor of being in the presence of a star pro that only gives 50% effort for the 25% of the game that the coach plays him.
