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Braves ditching The Ted for suburbs

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by rico_the_redneck, Nov 11, 2013.

  1. Mark2010

    Mark2010 Active Member

    Baseball does have a problem with the length of games. That's been an issue that needs to be addressed for a while now.

    Another problem is the schedule itself. Football is once a week to follow your favorite team. Basketball or hockey is 3-4 nights per week. Baseball is virtually every freakin' day for six months. No wonder the fan base is older.... retirees might be the only ones who can devote that sort of time to it.

    And I get the cable sports deals. Without baseball 160 or so days out of the year, those channels wouldn't have enough to air to keep them in business. So baseball's daily ritual becomes their lifeblood.

    As for the stadiums, I guess I can't blame a team for taking a sweetheart deal. But when are local governments going to wise up and stop playing the fool with public dollars to build these things. Guess the recession didn't change things very much.
     
  2. deskslave

    deskslave Active Member

    Not that this is necessarily reflective of anything, but my 26ish-year-old cousin and her husband had a partial Braves season ticket package last season. Might have been 15 games or something, but they're fairly regular attenders, and they don't live in the city.

    Braves have also done a lot with midweek ticket/concession packages -- 2 for $8 tickets, all-you-can-eat, etc. Get a small group together and you can probably manage to have a decent night out for pretty damn cheap, depending on how much you feel like drinking.
     
  3. Mark2010

    Mark2010 Active Member

    Baseball is still the best sport to attend in person as a social/group thing. Maybe its the pace of the game. Maybe its the season and the weather (unless you are in the deep south, where it's too stinkin' hot). Maybe its something else.

    With fewer games, football, hockey and basketball can't afford to give tickets away at a cheaper rate to boost attendance. Baseball can do that. With the exception of maybe Boston or Chicago, when is the last time a regular season MLB game was a sell out? I've bought most of my tickets walk-up day of the game; depending on the market and other factors, I may not be able to do that with other sports.

    So baseball has some advantages when it comes to gate.
     
  4. LanceyHoward

    LanceyHoward Well-Known Member

    I think that baseball is doing well. But I think that baseball is a game that has always done well regionally but not as well nationally. It is very hard to draw an audience for a nationally telecast baseball game. Last Thursday the Redskins played the Vikings. The ratings from this game would crush a nationally televised Nationals-Twins game.

    But while fans are not particularly interested in sport nationally they do follow the sport locally. In most towns the NFL franchise is usually tops in interest but the baseball team draws more interest than the basketball or hockey team. So I think baseball will do fime for a long time. The regional fan bases will see to that.
     
  5. Mark2010

    Mark2010 Active Member

    Comparing baseball to football is sort of apples to oranges. Football plays 16 games, so each one is roughly equivalent to 10 baseball games in terms of percentage of the schedule. Miss a baseball game and there's another one tomorrow... and probably the next day, too. Football is once a week.

    Honestly, I think that is a huge part of football's mass appeal. It requires the least amount of time investment of any of the team sports to stay current with your team/league.
     
  6. Batman

    Batman Well-Known Member

    Baseball works both ways, though. You can dive into it and follow it every day, or you can let it be summer background noise. Tune in, watch a game or a series, keep an eye on the standings, and follow things without watching every single game.
    I got the Extra Innings cable package a couple of years ago, and it's wonderful for that. I casually follow my team and watch a good many of their games -- usually drifting in and out -- but I also enjoy listening to a random Rockies-Giants game when I'm home on a Wednesday afternoon in June. It's wonderful background noise.
     
  7. 93Devil

    93Devil Well-Known Member

    More people might have been watching a game start to finish in the 1970s or 1980s, but think of all the foreign markets watching Kuroda, Ichiro, Puig and others now that were not there 30-40 years ago.

    Honestly, speeding up the game, and that can be done easily, is the biggest issue facing MLB.

    Once you step into the batters box you cannot step out and once the at bat starts, you have to stay on the rubber would make baseball so much more watchable.
     
  8. deskslave

    deskslave Active Member

    The Giants have a sellout streak about four years long. It's a bullshit sellout streak, but it's still a sellout streak. I would guess that every other team in MLB other than perhaps the Marlins had a sellout other than Opening Day last year. The A's had a six-game homestand that drew better than 170K.

    I would have thought it would be more difficult to carry on posting on topics about which you know nothing, but apparently it's quite easy.
     
  9. Michael_ Gee

    Michael_ Gee Well-Known Member

    The NFL is spending much money (something it's not fond of) to improve the "fan experience" so that people keep coming to the games rather than stay home and watch Red Zone. Baseball doesn't have the problem of competing with itself on television. Attendance was quite robust this year, just as it's been for the last 20 years.
     
  10. micropolitan guy

    micropolitan guy Well-Known Member

    Yes, games take longer than they used to, and some streamlining must be done to knock off 10-15 minutes. But the average MLB game is still 30 minutes shorter than a college or NFL football game, both of which now go way past the three-hour mark.

    Commercials are the prime culprits in lengthening games, of course, but especially football. Everybody hates the guy in the red hat standing on the field after every touchdown or time out while the players stand around and do nothing.

    And while baseball's commercial breaks are also annoying, they generally don't disrupt the flow of the game. Unlike football's, where it's score, extra point, 3-minute commercial break, kickoff (touchback), three-minute commercial break, and then rinse and repeat until 60 Minutes is delayed for 40 minutes. Same thing after a punt.

    I would also say that baseball games (major, minor) are the only pro events where you see families, because they are more affordable. When the TV cameras pan the stands, you very rarely see families at NFL, NBA or NHL games.

    As MG just said, I'll sit home and watch Red Zone instead of possibly driving five hours to Seattle and paying $80 a ticket to sit in Bellevue to watch an NFL game.
     
  11. doctorquant

    doctorquant Well-Known Member

    Don't forget just how charming the crowd at an NFL game can be. Nothing's more fun than sitting there, with your kids, amongst a host of slobbering-drunk 20-/30-somethings who can't go five syllables without an F-bomb.
     
  12. Mark2010

    Mark2010 Active Member

    Interesting points about crowd behavior.

    With the darn new TV contracts, NFL games require 5 TV timeouts per quarter (or 10 per half), and college games four per quarter. It's almost like I know when they're coming, so I time my bathroom and fridge breaks accordingly.

    You're right about the length of games. And, yeah, football has plenty of down time between plays, too. I dunno, baseball just SEEMS slower to me.
     
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