Baseball Is Dying

[Mark17]

Originally Posted by Rich Klein

5) One key reason the NFL is even bigger than ever is they have not forsaken the free TV (available on Local stations) broadcasts. Being a baseball fan is getting to be well nigh impossible in today's world and you want to make it easier to see games, not harder.

Regards
Rich

This.

Much as I hate the NFL, with its National Anthem snubs, penalty flags on almost every play, and non-flags when it's obvious there should've been a penalty called..... at least I am able to view games.

I generally have to wait until deep in the playoffs or World Series before I can watch a baseball game on TV.

[bmattioli]

Originally Posted by Mark17

This.

Much as I hate the NFL, with its National Anthem snubs, penalty flags on almost every play, and non-flags when it's obvious there should've been a penalty called..... at least I am able to view games.

I generally have to wait until deep in the playoffs or World Series before I can watch a baseball game on TV.

Dude.. You can stream any MLB game you want for FREE.. That's what I do every night when the Redsox don't play

[Mark17]

Originally Posted by bmattioli

Dude.. You can stream any MLB game you want for FREE.. That's what I do every night when the Redsox don't play

How?

This is what I am seeing:

[bmattioli]

Originally Posted by Mark17

How?

This is what I am seeing:

Go to Reddit for links. It might take you abit to figure it out but well worth it.. Try it..

[Snapolit1]

A lot of businesses wish they were dying this hard.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/maurybr...h=6af1accb7f63

It's sort of like people who are invested in there being more crime today than there was 50 years ago. You could show them all the FBI statistics from now till Sunday and they have already decided what the story really is.

[Orioles1954]

Originally Posted by Snapolit1

A lot of businesses wish they were dying this hard.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/maurybr...h=6af1accb7f63

It's sort of like people who are invested in there being more crime today than there was 50 years ago. You could show them all the FBI statistics from now till Sunday and they have already decided what the story really is.

I probably shouldn't answer because I'm a jaded Orioles fan and haven't seen an O's cap in Maryland neighborhood in at least 3 years.

[BobC]

Originally Posted by Mark17

How?

This is what I am seeing:

There was a separate thread started telling you how if you have T-Mobile you can get the 2022 MLB package for free. It is currently on page 2 for this main forum.

[ClementeFanOh]

Lots of wise words in the comments. I’d just say that a lot of pro sports are “dying”. I wouldn’t watch an NFL game if it was held in my back yard (funny that people say baseball features too much standing around and takes too long. The NFL is even worse, WAY too much inaction and commercials). NBA is hopeless trash…I think some sports are enjoying a boost, but it’s not the “big 3”. Doesn’t mean they aren’t making money, it means it’s basically unwatchable. That’s why I focus on my cards- now THAT is fun Trent King

[Mike D.]

Sports Illustrated’s 99 Things to Look Forward to This MLB Season:

https://www.si.com/mlb/2022/04/07/ml...-day-99-things

[Rhotchkiss]

I stopped being a fan of baseball in the early 1990's. But I love old baseball cards!

My 13 year-old is into collecting. When we go to shows, he looks only at basketball and football. He has no interest in baseball, unless he thinks its something I would like.

[Snapolit1]

If baseball is dying someone better quickly call Jeff Bezos, Apple and a bunch of other companies and tell them that their business people are way off the reservation.

[jingram058]

Originally Posted by Snapolit1

If baseball is dying someone better quickly call Jeff Bezos, Apple and a bunch of other companies and tell them that their business people are way off the reservation.

For whatever reason, you seem to take condescending pleasure in denying or ignoring the undeniable facts that attendance and viewership numbers are seriously down, and that baseball has some serious issues. MLB is attempting to generate 18 to 35 year-old fan interest by changing and tinkering with the game in every possible way without addressing what people perceive (perception is reality) is the number one reason for interest decline: length of games. Length of games is 100% the result of advertising to generate revenue to pay player salaries. Thus, the length of games cannot be shortened. So, not just you, but MLB itself is ignoring or denying facts as well. I guess you can just ignore facts, and everything is great. My wife is one of those "half full" people also. I've just seen enough in my 64 years that I take what would seem to me to be a more realistic way of looking at things.

That said, it is indeed opening day (Yankees - Red Sox got pushed back a day on account of weather), the grass is green...Play Ball!

[Snapolit1]

Major United States business entities are paying record amounts of money to broadcast games in a dying sport.

Tell me I am wrong. Show me I am wrong.

If no one is watching baseball these companies are really delusional.

Originally Posted by jingram058

For whatever reason, you seem to take condescending pleasure in denying or ignoring the undeniable facts that attendance and viewership numbers are seriously down, and that baseball has some serious issues. MLB is attempting to generate 18 to 35 year-old fan interest by changing and tinkering with the game in every possible way without addressing what people perceive (perception is reality) is the number one reason for interest decline: length of games. Length of games is 100% the result of advertising to generate revenue to pay player salaries. Thus, the length of games cannot be shortened. So, not just you, but MLB itself is ignoring or denying facts as well. I guess you can just ignore facts, and everything is great. My wife is one of those "half full" people also. I've just seen enough in my 64 years that I take what would seem to me to be a more realistic way of looking at things.

That said, it is indeed opening day (Yankees - Red Sox got pushed back a day on account of weather), the grass is green...Play Ball!

[slidekellyslide]

MLB also has the stupid blackout rules which make it impossible for me to get any Kansas City Royals home games even though I paid $139.99 for the MLB package. Luckily I'm not much of a Royals fan, the Red Sox are my team so I get all their games, but to not be able to watch any home games of the team closest to me is insane. There are 81 home games for every team, only retired people who can afford to do so go to every game. It's absolute insanity to block fans from watching their favorite team.

[Tabe]

Originally Posted by slidekellyslide

MLB also has the stupid blackout rules which make it impossible for me to get any Kansas City Royals home games even though I paid $139.99 for the MLB package.

It's not just MLB. The NHL does it, too. I can't see Kraken games on the streaming package until a day or two later because of the blackout rules. I live *300* miles from Seattle. Thankfully, I'm a Detroit fan so it's not really an issue. In prior years, they at least just made the blackout last only until the game was over. As soon as the game ended, I could watch it. Not anymore now that they've moved to an awful setup on ESPN+.

[Casey2296]

Baseball is a cerebral game, it's also a game of accessibility, if our young kids don't have access to playing the sport through little league, pick up games etc. you won't have built a generation of fans, it takes work not money to build baseball fans, the commissioner and networks have no idea how to build a fan base and quite frankly they're too stupid to know how. Inner city baseball? Forget it, there's no room for fields or motivation to build the game there.
It's a sad state of affairs and a poor reflection on our society as a whole.

Oh, and Go Giants!

[npa589]

Baseball is not dying. Look, I'm in my 30s, and I am not going to extrapolate my own interest into widespread interest, but what I do know is that Basketball was "dying" in the 80s and again in the early 2000s. Football was dying from the 60s to the 90s. It's cultural, and society is cyclical with its interests.

When Amazon, Apple, Google, and Meta decide that the best value is promoting baseball - guess what is gonna magically be a part of the interest bubble for young-ins. Yes, baseball.

I will also say that I am in constant amazement at how incompetent the MLB is at running the MLB. It's not as simple to say Manfred or Selig were incompetent and leave it at that. We could elect 10 people on this forum to do a laughably better job at casting and implementing a vision for MLB. They often seem to follow the Gary Bettman playbook for how to run a league.

Let me provide one example of idiocy related to something that should be obvious. Any MLB Extra Innings users out there? Well, for years, No Spoilers would be a setting that was welcomed and useful. Now when you click that as you are watching the game - their "detailed" stream basically lays out what happens. 1. You can see how long each half an inning is. 2. If you dare to click the scoreboard, or I think just scroll down, you'll see if there is a bottom of the ninth or not.

Yet, despite their best efforts, baseball will still survive and in my opinion surpass both basketball and football at some point in the next 20 years. It's just historically been proven over and over that sports go in cycles of popularity.

Lastly - baseball "dying" in the USA is being ignorant to the fact that it's more widely played than American football is internationally. It's not dying.

[doug.goodman]

So what if it's dying, by whatever way of thinking that you care to listen to.

We're in a country of 300+ million, as long as 18 of them are willing to get together for a game, I'll be happy to listen (because I live in LA and my team hates it's fans so watching is nearly impossible).

Doug

[puckpaul]

Baseball needs a pitching clock and it is coming. The games will be a lot better to watch when faster. Hope that helps, it has really deteriorated the viewing experience for years.

I live in CA now, baseball at the youth level is way bigger than the east coast. Los of kids taking it seriously. Gives me hope!

But i will tell you what needs to die…the NY Times! What a biased joke of a paper masquerading as serious journalism. Stopped reading anything from them years ago.

To me, the NBA is absolutely unwatchable. Just a bunch of selfish players chucking up threes. I watch the NFL and love football, but often i watch it on DVR with the breaks fastforwarded. Takes an hour and a half to watch the 3 1/2 hr telecast.

[Yoda]

Just to add my 2 cents, just look how Tiger Wood's unexpected re-emergence in the Masters after his terrible accident has drawn such public interest and rejuvenated interest in golf, which had been suffering declining tv ratings. I cannot envision a similar scenario in baseball.
Also, the decline of minor league ball is a tragedy for the game. Triple A teams especially were really the pipeline for good players develop until they were ready for the Big Show. Although he is a special case, think of Jackie Robinson and Montreal and Mantle with Joplin.

[G1911]

It’s not dying in the sense that it’s going to disappear anytime soon, but I fail to see any reasonable data based argument that baseballs decreasing relevance and popularity is fictional. It is measurably less and less popular as time goes on while other sports increase in popularity. It hasn’t been America’s pastime for half a century now and the gap keeps increasing.

[sreader3]

I was more excited about opening day this year than in many years. And I don’t even really follow a team anymore—just players.

No, baseball is most surely not dying …

“They'll watch the game and it'll be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick they'll have to brush them away from their faces. People will come Ray. The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again.”

Pete Ward, Tommy Davis and John Ellis passed in the last month. I suspect that those names evoke fond memories in many on this board. Baseball is not dying.

[bbcard1]

Baseball is not dying nearly as quickly as the print media.

[dio]

how can it be dying when these teams are paying their players $$$$$$$ this much

[maniac_73]

This chart gives a pretty good explanation of why baseball is dying. I say this after trying to slub through a jays game that after 2 hours was in the 4th inning yesterday. I grew up with baseball and I love baseball. If Im having trouble sitting through a 4 hour game what chance does a kid who's been conditioned to not have an attention span and has a million other choices for entertainment?

[Aquarian Sports Cards]

If you don't allow Clayton Kershaw to try and finish what was on pace to be possibly the greatest game ever pitched with only 80 pitches thrown through 7 innings, maybe baseball deserves to die...

[jamest206]

I will go to a game at Coors Field every day of the week vs an NBA game. The disgrace of a “National Anthem” on tv during Covid, explaining to my wife (who was a veteran as a Marine AND Army, Kosovo conflict) that we will never watch this, and the audacity of doing something like that with no in person crowd.

Met my wife three years ago. Took her to opening weekend of Rockies/Dodgers and she fell in love. Going to a game vs watching on television are two different animals. She loved being at the game, and I made sure we sat 10 rows back, dead center behind home plate. They also honor the veterans during the game. Sure, the cost is up there, but not nearly as close as sitting at the top of Mile High in January for a meaningless game. I can go on and on about how television can make something look so different in person vs football. QB’s so inaccurate, the standards are different.

Everything is dying, they say. Baseball changes with the time, and we are coming out of two years with Covid, and the cost of everything going up sky high once things opened up this year. I worked in printing during my 20’s, and that industry on big Heidelbergs is dead, along with skewed newspapers, gas powered cars (they say), and so on.

Sure, the current commissioner is a hypocrite, and not well liked. I expect the game to look a little different next year, but not too much. I recommend watching Ken Burns original Baseball documentary from time to time. It never gets old, and is a friendly reminder of the way things were, are, and will be.

[carlsonjok]

Originally Posted by Tabe

It's not just MLB. The NHL does it, too. I can't see Kraken games on the streaming package until a day or two later because of the blackout rules. I live *300* miles from Seattle. Thankfully, I'm a Detroit fan so it's not really an issue. In prior years, they at least just made the blackout last only until the game was over. As soon as the game ended, I could watch it. Not anymore now that they've moved to an awful setup on ESPN+.

Two separate comments regarding this. First, try living in Oklahoma City. I have to deal with the blackout rules for the Royals, Cardinals, Rangers, and Astros. As a Yankees/Guardians fans, that is a lot of games I can't watch. Particularly because, as Rich points out, those of us who have cut the cord and only stream can't get the local sports network. Second, the NBA also enforces local blackouts, but the difference is that you can get around it with a VPN. I tried last year with MLB TV and I wasn't able to use that way to get around local blackout rules.

[D. Bergin]

In this day and age, when most revenue actually comes from broadcast rights, blackout rules are absolutely idiotic.

Anybody who wants to spend $500+ to bring their family out to a game, isn't going to stay in and watch it on TV instead.

It seems self-defeating and whittles away at your future fan base.

[Mountaineer1999]

Baseball may not be dying, but it sure isn't the same as it used to be. Ive mostly attributed this to me getting older but my 20 year old boys find it boring so Im not so sure. When I was growing up in the hills of Appalachia in the 1970s, baseball was magical an escape from the day to day. Most here are talking about not being able to see the games. In the 1970s that was the allure. We saw two games a week, Saturday NBC game of the week and Monday night baseball, I spent all my time trying to get KDKA radio to come in in Southern WV to hear the Pirates games. Those are memories i cherish now. Baseball has lost its mystique, its romanticism because it's everywhere. Or maybe I've just gotten old.

[Mountaineer1999]

Also, if you're a T-Mobile customer. The MLBTv package is free every year.

[Snapolit1]

Originally Posted by Mountaineer1999

Baseball may not be dying, but it sure isn't the same as it used to be. Ive mostly attributed this to me getting older but my 20 year old boys find it boring so Im not so sure. When I was growing up in the hills of Appalachia in the 1970s, baseball was magical an escape from the day to day. Most here are talking about not being able to see the games. In the 1970s that was the allure. We saw two games a week, Saturday NBC game of the week and Monday night baseball, I spent all my time trying to get KDKA radio to come in in Southern WV to hear the Pirates games. Those are memories i cherish now. Baseball has lost its mystique, its romanticism because it's everywhere. Or maybe I've just gotten old.

My 20 year old sons find everything I've ever done in my life boring. Their idea of watching a movie is having it on the big screen, while they post on Redditt about what they are watching, while the text their friends about completely unrelated things, while they occasionally glance down at their college homework. And somehow they seem to understand more about the movie than I do.