Baseball LCS ratings down! The world is coming to an end!

Isn't the slogan football is America's Game?

Fine. Baseball can be the national pastime. Football can be America's Game. The two can co-exist.

We'll see how the ratings for Game 6 and 7 end up. I really hope to see numbers above 15 million, maybe approaching 20M if there is a Game 7?

 

Baseball needs to sell storylines better. The public responds to storylines.

Why haven't I seen commercials about Albert Pujols trying to deliver a championship to St. Louis in possibly his last week as a Cardinal? Why don't I see commercials about Josh Hamilton's long road back? Why?

 

National regular season ratings were great in 2011. Local ratings were excellent everywhere there were winning teams except Tampa and probably Arizona. Playoff ratings are a relatively minor business concern for MLB, because its cable packages, national and local, are the bulk of its broadcasting revenue.
The best way, which would NEVER happen, to boost World Series ratings and restore some of its prestige is to shorten the playoffs. Get rid of the wild card, have four divisions of two leagues, and go back to the 3 of 5 LCSs. But of course baseball will go the other way. And it shouldn't shorten the playoffs, because increasing interest in the regular season is its best business plan.

 

Couple questions:

(1) Intuitively, I agree with you about how to restore prestige to the World Series. I'm curious about why you think that would be the case. Are people merely burned out with baseball by the time the World Series arrives?

(2) You say that baseball will go the other way and lengthen the playoffs. I take it that you agree with this as a business decision, as it will spread late regular-season interest to more markets? Something confused me in your paragraph about that.

 

This is all on Fox's childlike and barely watchable pregame show.

 

Great. Marketing to the people already watching.

 

Because you can't tell those stories to the tune of "Written in the Stars" while mixing in the required number of Yankees or Red Sox clips.

 

I read a book about baseball broadcasters by Curt Smith, can't remember the exact name. He repeatedly made the point that baseball has historically marketed itself regionally pretty effectively. But it never effectively marketed itself nationally.

The NFL, starting with the contracts fo the 60's, did market nationally. Which is why national football games do a hell of a lot better than baseball games. A 62-7 game between two small market teams, one of whom is winless and without thier superstar, comes within 25% of a World Series game?

But the gap in interest at the local level is not as great. While I think it is sfae to say that in most markets the NFL team draws the most interest most baseball teams have a lot of regional interest and certainly generally more than the local NBA team.

 

Part of that is a league that has been marketing nationally for many, many years.

Does anybody really think a small-market franchise in MLB could build that?

 

In baseball, marketing nationally is, with rare exceptions, doomed to fail simply because of the way the season is designed.

You can market the hell out of Albert Pujols — and I'm reasonably sure every casual baseball fan knows who he is by now, although he doesn't have the Q rating that, say, Ken Griffey Jr. did in the 1990s — but unless you live near one of about 16 major cities in the U.S. (including the 2-3 AL teams the Cardinals face in interleague), you won't get to see him play in person this year. Or even see him on your local team's TV broadcast. And even in those cities, outside the division you only get to see him for a few nights a year.

Baseball is a regional sport. Always has been, even when it was called the National Pastime. Always will be.

That doesn't mean it's not wildly successful. It is. But national TV ratings aren't a good barometer of that, and I'm not sure why anyone should care about them other than TV executives.

If you're not watching, you're missing out. Simple as that.

 

Baseball could fix some of this by putting the World Series on a network that genuinely cares about the welfare of the game. And demand a broadcast team that doesn't constantly patronize and alienate its viewership.

 

Well, the NFL is looking at at least five billion a year in television revenue in the next contact. So if you own a baseball team you probably care.

From a fan's perspective St. Louis is not a large market and is in the World Series I think it is fair to say that there is greater competitive equality between small and large market teams in the NFL than in MLB. The ability of all the teams to cover their payroll with television revenue leads to a lot of that equality.