Marvin Miller cards?

[trdcrdkid]

Originally Posted by rats60

Baseball's popularity peaked in the 70s and has been declining ever since.

Sorry, but the evidence doesn't support your claim. Below are the attendance figures for the NL and AL each year from 1970 through 2017, from Baseball-reference.com. Total MLB attendance this year was 67% more than in 1979, and per-game attendance was 44% more. Per-game attendance this year was more than twice as much as in 1970. By any objective measure, baseball is a lot more popular now than it was in the 1970s, which was itself a decade of tremendous growth for the sport. It has been that growth, especially the exponential growth of TV money flooding into the owners' coffers over the past 40 years, that has been the primary driver of the huge increases in players' salaries. Marvin Miller and Donald Fehr merely helped the players get a larger share of that flood of cash than they would have otherwise received.

[bobbvc]

Thanks for the chart David! I don't think "evidence" is going to work on the anti- Miller crowd though. Couple things I noticed. About 3,000 people per game prefer not having a DH. And since about 1980 the average MLB game has out drawn the 2017 "LA" Chargers.

[George]

It appears that attendance peaked in 1993 and 1994, dropped precipitously in 1995, and then took almost ten years to recover. I wonder what the reason for that might have been.

[glynparson]

Does anyone have the number of different champs in each sport over the last say 25 years. it seems Football and Basketball have as much of a problem if not worse than baseball of the same team(s) winning all the time. As a pirate fan I refuse to use the we have no money as an excuse not when we had a decent run, Oakland is often competitive, Kansas City has been a contender lately. Pretending small markets have no shot just is not true. Of course there are years when certain ones have no shot but there are always teams in every sport you can say this about. If the biggest spender was automatically the winner why even play the games? Just give it to the team that spent the most money.
Even though I have been a business owner most of my life I will never turn my back on the working man ( My father worked 6-7 days a week 10-12 hours a day in a steel mill to provide for our family I have seen hard physical work. Then I saw how his company treated him and his fellow workers. No loyalty and they decreased all the workers wages while company profits increased as did the salaries of the big whigs. Players are one of the few laborers with any leverage and i will always support them for using that leverage.

[Leon]

Originally Posted by George

It appears that attendance peaked in 1993 and 1994, dropped precipitously in 1995, and then took almost ten years to recover. I wonder what the reason for that might have been.

They only played part of a season in 1994. The 1995 season bore the brunt of that. They lost me at that time too. I don't think they cared though.

[rats60]

Originally Posted by trdcrdkid

Sorry, but the evidence doesn't support your claim. Below are the attendance figures for the NL and AL each year from 1970 through 2017, from Baseball-reference.com. Total MLB attendance this year was 67% more than in 1979, and per-game attendance was 44% more. Per-game attendance this year was more than twice as much as in 1970. By any objective measure, baseball is a lot more popular now than it was in the 1970s, which was itself a decade of tremendous growth for the sport. It has been that growth, especially the exponential growth of TV money flooding into the owners' coffers over the past 40 years, that has been the primary driver of the huge increases in players' salaries. Marvin Miller and Donald Fehr merely helped the players get a larger share of that flood of cash than they would have otherwise received.

What about TV ratings? Attendance is a very small part of popularity, many more people watch games by TV. If MLB is so popular, then why are the World Series ratings so poor? 2012 7.6 12.6 million, 2013 8.9 15 million, 2014 8.2 13.9 million, 2015 8.6 14.5 million. Even with a historic WS in 2016 12.9 22.8 million. In 1978, the World Series had a 32.8 rating and 44.2 million views. Do you really think a few thousand more people going to games is more reflective of baseball's popularity than losing roughly 30 million fans watching the most important games of the year? The general population doesn't care about baseball like it used to.

Let's compare that to the NFL. The highest rated Super Bowl in the 70s was 1978 47.2, 79 million. Last year 45.3 111 million viewers. If this year's game only draws 30 million viewers, would you say that the NFL is still growing in popularity? Those raw attendance numbers tell us very little. I would like to see how many fans are attending games vs. corporate sales for business just using the game as a write off. The average fan cannot afford to go to many games. I would like for you to tell me why those average fans don't care to watch the game anymore.

[btcarfagno]

Originally Posted by rats60

What about TV ratings? Attendance is a very small part of popularity, many more people watch games by TV. If MLB is so popular, then why are the World Series ratings so poor? 2012 7.6 12.6 million, 2013 8.9 15 million, 2014 8.2 13.9 million, 2015 8.6 14.5 million. Even with a historic WS in 2016 12.9 22.8 million. In 1978, the World Series had a 32.8 rating and 44.2 million views. Do you really think a few thousand more people going to games is more reflective of baseball's popularity than losing roughly 30 million fans watching the most important games of the year? The general population doesn't care about baseball like it used to.

Let's compare that to the NFL. The highest rated Super Bowl in the 70s was 1978 47.2, 79 million. Last year 45.3 111 million viewers. If this year's game only draws 30 million viewers, would you say that the NFL is still growing in popularity? Those raw attendance numbers tell us very little. I would like to see how many fans are attending games vs. corporate sales for business just using the game as a write off. The average fan cannot afford to go to many games. I would like for you to tell me why those average fans don't care to watch the game anymore.

A football team plays what? 20 games per season at most? Add up all those numbers for all of those teams versus the numbers for all MLB teams for their 162 game regular season plus their postseason. Get back to me when you see which one is higher.

Tom C