Could Major League Baseball and the MLBPA be any more tone-deaf?
The MLB and MLBPA are still negotiating a new Collective Bargaining Agreement. It’s unclear if either is aware of what’s going on around them and the impact these negotiations have on the sport.
As the sport (and world) burns all around them, Major League Baseball and the MLBA continue fruitless negotiations to get the sport back on track. The sides seem oblivious to the damage they are causing.
Could Major League Baseball and the MLBPA be any more tone-deaf?
The politicking of both parties is exhausting. Sports overall is seeing an increase in viewership. Over the weekend, Charlotte FC set a new MLS single-game attendance record of 74,479. Major League Soccer is the sport that just won’t go away. Believe it or not, they are eating into the MLB market share. Their season runs at the same time the Major League Baseball season runs.
In 2021, with many pandemic mandates in place to limit attendance, the average attendance of an MLS game was 16,910. In 2019, it was 21,873. Let’s run that up against the MLB average. In 2021, with pandemic mandates in place, the average attendance was 18,900, and in 2019 it was 28,317. The drop-off is significant because the leagues run in a similar timeframe.
In several MLS/MLB cities, MLS won. Seattle, Atlanta (WS Champs), Cincinnati, Kansas City, and Miami were the teams where more fans watched live games on average than their MLB counterparts. MLB still owns the total attendance share as there are typically 81 home games. Though not in 2022.
Could Major League Baseball and the MLBPA be any more tone-deaf?
The NBA expanded their playoffs from 8 teams in each conference to 10. Seeds 7-10 go through a play-in-game style format for the opportunity to square off against the top two seeds in each division. That’s 20 markets that make the postseason. As baseball is supposed to be winding up and the NBA winding down, the NBA is now pulling a larger share of the sports entertainment world than they’re supposed to.
Don’t get me wrong, the NBA is still a distant third in overall viewership, but their growth trajectory would tell you that they will pass MLB soon. To the layman, it would seem that it’s based on the entertainment value of baseball. It’s hard to make an apples-to-apples comparison here as the NBA ranks as easily the highest part-time viewership sport with audiences likely to tune in live if the score is close in the fourth quarter and watch the finish.
Where in baseball, there isn’t a finite time limit and often times it’s hard to be a part-time viewer and know what is going on or what is going to happen. Without baseball, though, basketball takes center stage and gives reasons for the casual fan or part-time viewer to pay attention to the instant gratification of finishing an NBA game vs. the time investment required to watch baseball.