If Major League Baseball Is Serious About "Growing The Sport", Or Just Saving It From Dying, They Need To Take A Long Hard Look At What The NFL And Nickelodeon Are Doing.
I'm not gonna try to downplay it to seem cool, and you can hate on me all you want. But I was unreasonably excited to watch the 49ers vs. Cowboys game on Nickelodeon yesterday.
Two teams I have no allegiance to (I did pick the 49ers to go to this year's SB (but it was vs. the Browns)) and there I was checking my watch for when I could switch on Nickelodeon at my bar for the telecast to come on. (They didn't do a long-drawn-out pregame special like they did on CBS.)
Something I can't remember I said for the last baseball game that occurred that I wasn't attending in person.
Major League Baseball has a serious problem. One they've openly acknowledged.
The sport is dying.
Not the sport itself per se, baseball has and always will be the lifeblood and national pastime of this country.
But interest in it.
Die-hard baseball fans, people of our fathers, and grand fathers' generations are getting older and dying off. And the brain trust at MLB isn't exactly replenishing the ranks by appealing to the younger generations.
In 2021, for the first time in 15 years, total attendance dropped below 70 million; 17 teams experienced a decline in 2018. MLB blames much of that on historically bad weather, particularly in April. But with the average game time still over three hours, fans did not want to chance a long night.
The NBA is lapping MLB in scooping up the coveted demographic of adults ages 18-49 (up 28%) and women (up 26%).
Viewership of NBA games on ESPN is up 20% so far this season amid a general rise in ratings for sporting events this year.
ESPN is averaging 1.44 million viewers through 12 games so far this season, up from the 2020-21 season’s average of 1.2 million, according to Nielsen data relayed by ESPN Press Room.
Viewership is up across many demographics, including adults ages 18-49 (up 28%) and women (up 26%).
Viewership has also risen for the NBA’s other national broadcasting partner, TNT, with an Oct. 26 game between the Philadelphia 76ers and New York Knicks averaging 1.43 million viewers compared to a Milwaukee Bucks-Miami Heat game from the same point in the season last year, which averaged 837,000, according to Sports Media Watch.
Mark Cuban famously, and incorrectly, predicted the NFL's demise
“I think the NFL is 10 years away from an implosion,” Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban said in 2014, after the NFL expanded its TV package to include Thursday games (the NBA’s main showcase night, with games on TNT). “I’m just telling you: Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. And they’re getting hoggy.”
But it hasn't trended like that's going to happen anytime soon.
The NFL continues to dominate not just sports, but all of television, with Nov. 1’s Sunday Night Football on NBC earning the highest ratings of any broadcast that week with an average of 14.2 million viewers (Game 6 of the World Series came in second).
The NFL, as much as we can say we hate it's commissioner, and the ownership groups, runs a clinic in successful business practice.
Awful scandals, violent crimes, you name, and the NFL deflects it and keeps on moving along, ringing the cash register.
The NBA is a more interesting comparison because of how much they have evolved and adapted over the past decade or so to usher in this new generation of fan.
It's commissioner, Adam Silver, is much to credit for spearheading the change. He was famously the first commissioner to openly acknowledge the giant elephant in the room that is sports betting and how vital it would become to the sport. Which it has for all sports.
He saw the importance of marketing the league's individual stars rather than teams- viewing stand-out players as assets, and using them to the overall benefit of the entire league.
He also embraced technology- social media, youtube, NFT's, you name it and the NBA pioneered it or is killing it compared to the rest of the leagues.
And last but not least, he saw the importance of attracting and keeping ones attention. Kids today, and people in general have almost zero attention span (if you're still reading this blog I'm shocked). Keeping people's attention today is next to impossible without some Zuckerberg designed algorithm you don't even know you're being brainwashed by.
The NBA embraced rewarding offense and penalizing defense. The result has been teams scoring in the 150's on a regular basis, a non stop amount of highlights, used to further market the product, stars being able to grow and grow quickly, and games that are over in less than 3 hours.
When you look at baseball, it's almost as if they're taking a long hard look at everything the NBA has done to make it successful and gain on them, and gone in the opposite direction.
The sport goes out of its way to not market it's stars.
There are generational talents wasting away in shit markets that nobody can ever watch because their games don't get prime slotting because the teams are out of contention and if their hometown fans don't give a shit about them then why would the rest of the country?
Guys like Mike Trout who are the second coming of Mickey Mantle, or Fernando Tatis Jr. who has no comparison should be names on par with Lebron James or Patrick Mahomes, but if you asked 10 kids who they were you'd be lucky to find 2 or 3 that knew.
The game is also somehow getting longer and longer and more boring. Despite the league trying what it thinks will help speed the pace of play up (pitch clocks, pitching change rules, and an awful extra innings rule) it's done the opposite.
Games are longer than ever, with more play stoppages. That's exactly how you lose attention.
The season is also obnoxiously long.
There is no reason to be playing opening day games in March or April with snow on the ground and freezing temps in Chicago or Minneapolis or Cleveland. Cut the season down. Make the games more meaningful and spread them out a little. If you absolutely must start the season that early, then let the cold weather outdoor teams play the first month or so on the road in warm weather or dome cities. Weight the rest of the schedule with more home series like the Bulls and Blackhawks do every year when the circus is in town.
There's also the whole issue with half of the league playing with a designated hitter, while the other half allows pitchers to strike out every ninth batter and risk injury.
There is a blatant inconsistency problem that the current rule presents, nobody wants to watch pitchers hit except for “baseball purists”. These stodgy assholes (think sportswriters) have long been the only voice preventing the introduction of the DH into the National League.
Getting kids today to both watch and play the sport needs to be MLB’s first priority. Implementing the DH in the NL would provide more offense and which means more highlights. And that's really what the younger generation is looking for in sports these days.
Like it or hate it they want to be entertained.
And speaking of entertainment, how about loosening up a little and letting the players actually "entertain".
Throw out the Goddamn "Unwritten Rules of Baseball" book. It's hurting the sport.
Let guys pimp home runs, let them flip the bat, let them show some personality.
And for crying out fucking loud, let the public actually see and share highlights of this stuff on social media.
It's free marketing!
I’ll tell you what definitely does not work- and that’s suspending accounts that do promote your brand. Just another perfect example of old, wealthy dinosaurs with no pulse or grasp on the current state of affairs, worried they’re losing pennies and dictating policy. (The music industry isn’t far removed)
Lastly, take a page out of what the NFL did this past weekend, and last year during Wild Card Weekend, and team up with Nickelodeon for a full season tv deal.
I think the NFL should do the same here because it's such a no brainer, but pick one game a week, instead of a season, and bring in the Nickelodeon crew of announcers and producers, and showcase the sport in a format that is fun and informative at the same time, without taking itself too seriously.
Kids will eat it up.
(And if it’s every week, it gives them the opportunity to build interest and follow along. It’s not just a once a season here-and-gone treat)
Their parents will too.
If you don't believe me look at how much Nickelodeon smashed their broadcast yesterday -
As soon as their broadcast kicked in it was off and running.
The crew explained the rivalry between the Cowboys and 49ers, so they used the rivalry between Mr. Krabs and Plankton.
They had it all
Including this kid Dylan on the sidelines who did a hell of a job eating Michelle Tafoya's lunch.
The CGI and graphics they used were out of this world.
And not just because of the colors of and quality of them, but because of how precise the graphics team in the truck was with the timing and placement on everything.
(Fun fact- I got to work with a lot of people who do this for a living through Wrigley Field over the past few years, both network and in-house, and they are insanely talented. But the job is still so hard to do because everything is happening in real-time. You have seconds, or milliseconds to react. The way the Nickelodeon team was firing these graphics off yesterday was unreal.)
They also did an awesome job of breaking stuff down on a super basic level so children, or just people unfamiliar with football in general, could understand.
And of course there was plenty of slime.
Only downside I had for the broadcast was you can't have F-bombs flying with kids watching. Gotta figure out a way to censor those.
Especially considering the same thing happened last year…
That Mike McCarthy graphic is laugh out loud funny for kids and adults.
They also do an awesome job of relating things to stuff kids know and can process.
Like this Ezekiel Elliot and Sonic The Hedgehog graphic
Even Coach Prime was a huge fan of it
I fell in love with the sport of baseball because I played it. Playing it lead me to wanting to watch it. Which lead me to falling in love with Ken Griffey Jr., Barry Bonds, Nomar Garciaparra, and guys who had personalities and weird quirks. And SWAGGER. It also helped that everybody in the league at the time was roided out of their mind and hitting moon shots on a nightly basis. But scoring and yabos were awesome to watch and as a kid, I couldn't get enough of it. It was FUN.
That lead to asking to go to Red Sox games, buying jerseys, baseball cards, and absorbing as much of everything involving them and the sport as possible. Watching on TV every night, on Sportscenter in the mornings, baseball all the time.
Baseball needs to find a way to be fun again. I know it kills the purists who are more concerned with the "sanctity" of the game and statistics and yada yada yada but if you want to take your kids or grandkids to a game one day that they'll actually look up from their phone to watch, you're going to have to sacrifice.
The recipe is right there for you Manfred.
p.s. - I say this every year at the All-Star break, but give me just one home run derby with the guys using aluminum bats and you will never go back. They will be hitting buildings down the street and airplanes in the skies. Sure some scoreboards will be damaged, a fan or two in the third deck might get decapitated, and you'll need those golf ball cameras to track the balls hit, but it will be must watch television.