While I admit that it may border on the no true scotsman fallacy, I’d venture to say that those of your poo-pooing the regular season baseball games just aren’t real baseball fans. I’ve seen some incredibly exciting regular season (what you might consider “meaningless” games). Some of my fondest memories of this year have not been playoff games, but rather close or dramatic regular season games. (I’m a Giants fan)
Baseball age demographics point to a dramatic decline.
That’s what I was going to post. As much as I hate to say this since I really like the sport, baseball’s long term popularity will be hurt by the fact that it’s pool of fans is grower older and that there are fewer younger fans coming in to replace them. Also, kids don’t play baseball (be it a pick-up game or Little League) as often. To become familiar with a sport, it helps to have at least played it a few times when you’re young. Kids, when they do bother to go outside to engage in physical activity, are more likely to play other sports like soccer or basketball. Kids, I think, are increasingly seeing the sport as an antiquated relic of a by-gone age.
And attendance is only part of the picture of a sport’s popularity. TV ratings are a bigger factor and baseball’s ratings for its spotlight events have been on a general downward trend for 30 years.
Little League participation has remained at roughly the same level (400-450,000 kids) for the last decade. And while it’s not outright stated in the article, the variations in years mostly come from kids playing in unaffiliated leagues.
:smack: The point remains about the number of teams who’ve made the playoffs/Series though.
About 10 years ago NBC wanted a short world series since they could make more money by running their normal hit shows like Friends.
Minor league baseball still does well in ticket sales but that’s because it’s very cheap and almost more of a social event for many people who go.
Minor league baseball has always been cheap. I’m not sure how this is a bad thing for baseball.
Popularity will fluctuate every year, but I don’t see the four major leagues ever really declining. Th biggest thing they have going for them in the built in regional fan base. I rarely watch hockey, but I’ll still root for the Blackhawks. Go to any bar in a NFL city on a Sunday and you’ll see plenty of people who aren’t big fans of football, cheering on the team and buying merchandise. And slowly some of those non-fans start following the game. On the other hand, there is no Chicago boxer or tennis player or golfer, etc. for me to root for if I want to get into the sport.
“Ever”?
Barring a zombie apocalypse, obviously. Zombie football will still be popular, but they don’t really have the dexterity for basketball.
I’m not being a smartass, I’m just always curious what people mean when they say something will go on “forever” (most commonly heard is right-wingers saying the United States will exist “forever”). Most people agree that the universe will die a heat death one day, so work backwards from there. Will people be playing basketball in a billion years? Ten million? Five hundred thousand? Or do you just mean, “the rest of our lives” (which could be a defensible definition of “forever”, I guess).
I agree with your asking, “Ever?”, for what that’s worth. The explosive growth of professional football, basketball, and, to a lesser extent, hockey in the U.S., and the implosive decline of boxing, horse racing, etc, have all occurred in my lifetime. In the case of hockey and boxing, a fraction of my lifetime. I don’t see any reason that the sports in fashion won’t change again within the next 53 years.
Well considering UFC just bought out the WEC I’d say they’re well on their way to solidifying themselves as the major player. Someone here made a very persuasive argument a few months ago that UFC will never fully go mainstream, but I don’t see it declining much either.
I’m surprised the NBA isn’t getting more discussion here. The sport of urban youth pricing tickets at $100-$5000 seems like exactly what has hurt NASCAR.
The UFC bought the WEC years ago. What you probably heard is that they’re finally folding the remainder of the WEC into the UFC (they folded the heavier weightclasses in a year or two ago) and dissolving the WEC.
Quick point that was made. If the NFL goes to 18 games it isn’t going to go later. The Pre-season will be shorter. That point was made a while ago and I’m late on the return. So the season will be the same length. Same # of games just more games that people actually care about .
Though, as it is, the NFL season is already several weeks longer than it was 20 years ago:
- The bye week adds a week to the regular season schedule
- There’s one more round of playoffs now
- The opening weekend of the regular season used to be Labor Day weekend; that’s been pushed a week later
I think they will start on Labor day if they go to 18 games. But I think I read somewhere they may have 2 bye weeks.
I believe this is what any big-money sport, entertainment or spectacle has to do eventually.
To keep advertisers and sponsors, you have to cater to their needs, not the public’s, and maximize, maximize, maximize. The public is muggins, so the wisdom goes, numb butts in seats, and will sit down for anything you promote for a good long while before they catch on that it’s no longer meant just to sell them a ticket to a fun event, but to sell them all kinds of other stuff. You ride that gravy train till it throws you off or you don’t get big.
If they simply convert the last two pre-season weeks to regular season games, it’d mean opening weekend would be the weekend before Labor Day.
If they add a second bye week, I’d hope they’d move the regular-season opener up another week still…otherwise, you won’t be ending the regular season until the second weekend of January, and the Super Bowl winds up in mid-February.
1980: Phillies
We were talking in the last four years.