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Analytics and the decline of Baseball's popularity?

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by qtlaw, Mar 12, 2019.

  1. DanOregon

    DanOregon Well-Known Member

    The average age of a MLB fan at this rate will be 70 when Bryce Harper's contract expires. AVERAGE age.
     
    cyclingwriter2 likes this.
  2. BTExpress

    BTExpress Well-Known Member

    Gee, I guess we need to bring box scores back to all our newspapers that dropped them.
     
    HanSenSE likes this.
  3. bigpern23

    bigpern23 Well-Known Member

    My 6-(almost 7)-year-old discovered basketball this year. He loves baseball, he's been playing since he was 3. But he needs someone else to play baseball with. As his basketball coach, a former NBA Rookie of the Year told his group, he doesn't need anyone else around to play basketball. And he's right. Now all I hear is the sound of a basketball banging on the hardwoods around the house.
     
  4. Twirling Time

    Twirling Time Well-Known Member

    Perhaps all those 4-hour games that start at 8 Eastern on a school night could have something to do with it.
     
  5. bigpern23

    bigpern23 Well-Known Member

    I largely agree with you, though I acknowledge that most East Coast games start at 7 p.m. and end somewhere between 10-11 p.m., which is fine for adults. Many weekend regular season games begin at 1 p.m., which helps me expose my kids to the MLB game. However, the big moments of the playoffs, which is really where baseball legends are made, are basically inaccessible to kids under the age of 12.

    Interestingly, this problem applies to the other major sports except for — you guessed it — the NFL, which starts its semifinal games at 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. and its championship game at 6:30 p.m. Despite starting an hour and a half before prime time, it gets the highest ad revenue of any television event of the year.

    Putting every single playoff LCS and World Series game in prime time is penny wise and pound foolish.
     
  6. DanOregon

    DanOregon Well-Known Member

    And be sure to pump up the typeface to 16pt.
     
  7. HanSenSE

    HanSenSE Well-Known Member

    There are crew scholarships available now. [/crossthread]
     
  8. Azrael

    Azrael Well-Known Member

    To be fair, we've been saying the same things about children and baseball and late start times since the end of World Series day games.

    Season is too long, games are too long, too many teams, etc., ad inf., repeat.
     
  9. Regan MacNeil

    Regan MacNeil Well-Known Member

    [​IMG]
     
  10. LanceyHoward

    LanceyHoward Well-Known Member

    I agree with the poster who said that in 2018 some, but not all of the attendance decline, can be attributed to bad weather. If attendance is down a million or more then I think we can say that a trend appears to be developing.

    But is a larger economic threat to any team considering a 13 year contract will be the demise of traditional cable television. Baseball, and the other major spectator sports have profited enormously from existing cable television companies ability to charge lots of money to subscribers for channels they have no interest in. As we move to streaming services sports events will be offered as individual events to consumers.
     
  11. Azrael

    Azrael Well-Known Member

    I'm a meme!

    Also, the end of the reserve clause and the introduction of the designated hitter and indoor games and raising the mound and lowering the mound and the introduction of jet travel already killed baseball.
     
  12. Cosmo

    Cosmo Well-Known Member

    Or adults who work semi-normal hours. I punted on last year's World Series, save for the weekend games, because I get up at 6 a.m. and there's no point getting invested in something I know won't end until 11 at the very earliest. Obviously would have felt differently if I cared about either team. I know baseball's in a tough spot there, though. You can't start a WS game on a weekday in Los Angeles at 3 p.m. just to placate the East Coast crowd. My biggest gripe will continue to be with the stupid NCAA basketball championship game starting at 9:15 p.m. on a Monday night. Start it at 8, for fuck's sake.
     
    bigpern23 likes this.
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