Baseball's... Dying??

Major league baseball over the years has been widely considered a “dying sport”, and with this has also been a lot of debate about which league is bigger/more popular: MLB or NBA? Even though numbers have dropped drastically for baseball, I still don’t believe it’s fair to give the NBA an upper edge just yet. Forbes released a list on May 7th this year detailing the most valuable sports franchises in the world. For those unaware, franchise value has been a very good indicator of what significance not only the team has in its brand, but what significance the league has as a whole. This category is probably the most important one that the NBA carries over the MLB, with the average value of an MLB team being approximately $1.8 Billion and the average NBA team sitting at approximately $2.1 Billion. A large part of this is due to something Max Kellerman once said on a former show he was on called “First Take” where he mentioned how baseball has become such a local sport nowadays. For example, if you’re a Padres fan, you’re probably not going to care about what the score of a Rays game is as opposed to if you were a Clippers fan caring about what the Mavs are doing. And because of this, an MLB team's fanbase is way more reliant on its local area to support the team than the NBA is itself; that is one thing the NFL does well. There are 17 games every year for an NFL team with almost all the games falling on one day (Sunday) with nearly every game being nationally televised, making it far more tempting to follow another team. And because the MLB is far unlike that, the MLB is a league that has a team like the Yankees who are worth over $5 billion (2nd most in all of sports) and a team like the Marlins who aren’t even worth $1 billion. Credit however, is deserved by the MLB for having some smaller, yet notable, wins over the NBA in this regard. With the fact that its most valuable team in the Yankees ($5.2 Billion) is more valuable than the NBA’s most valuable team in the New York Knicks ($5 Billion). When you also stack up the MLBs 5 most valuable teams up against the NBAs 5 most valuable you will see the MLB at the 1, 4 and 5 spots out gain the NBA. or how there is 4 MLB teams inside the top 22 most valuable teams compared to the NBAs 3. But all in all, The NBA takes the cake here. Notably because the MLB is heavily reliant on its local area. And there is only a handful of MLB teams that carry fans outside the area. At the end of the day, this isn’t a knock on the MLB. This is just how its fans operate. And because of this, I believe this is why the MLB postseason TV ratings appear higher than the NBA playoffs TV ratings. With the recent conclusion of the 2021 World Series, the MLB has beat the NBA in its championship viewership. Even in a time where the MLB hit its least viewed world series in 2020 and its 2nd least in 2021, it still manages to bring in more viewers. And a reason to why this is the case. Is because the MLBs local fanbase finally watches and gets involved with other teams during the postseason, as it is the best reason to watch another team other than yours. And it shows we MLB fans can drive numbers. The 2020 NBA finals averaged 7.4 million viewers even though the MLB (which keep in mind is a “Dying sport”) managed to average 9.7 million viewers in its least watched World Series ever. And in 2021, the NBA finals numbers raised, but the World Series numbers raised as well. With the NBA averaging 9.9 million viewers and the World series averaging 11.7 million viewers. In fact, the least watched world series game (game 2) pulled in more viewers than all the NBA finals games except for one (game 6). Another crazy fact about all this, is that game 7 of last years NLCS pulled in more viewers (9.6 million) than any 2020 NBA finals game. And just outside the playoffs, Viewership on Fox rose 43% and TBS 65%. And despite dropping 21% on ESPN, it still averaged more viewership on MLB games than NBA going into the all-star break, with the MLB averaging 1.2 million viewers when appearing on ESPN up until the all star break, and the NBA averaging 1.1 when appearing on ESPN the previous season. The MLBs fanbase is alive, and its big when it wants to be. But some People just fail to see through that. The postseason ratings compared to the NBA playoffs TV ratings is proof of that. When this fanbase gets more involved with stuff around the league, it brings in more than the NBA. With that said, when we talk about revenue, the revenue between these 2 leagues is close, making this is tricky to judge due to season/s that were shortened or played without fans due to Covid-19. But the last time these 2 leagues played its normal seasons the NBA pulled in $7.7 Billion vs the MLBs $9.7 Billion. If you want to go off the most recent seasons estimation (That has been released), In the NBAs shortened 72 game season which was played partially with fans, it brought in roughly $5.4 Billion and in the MLBs 60 game season with 0 fans until the NLCS and world series, that season generated $3.6 Billion. So, there is no good way to determine this. I feel its only best to judge this off the NBAs 2018-19 season and the MLBs 2019 Season. Although the MLB does play more games, this also means the NBA gets more attention and more nationally televised games. This is something that as a fan of either league cannot deny, means a lot. Even with that in mind, The MLB was not far behind in revenue during the 60-game season despite getting less time in the national spotlight compared to the NBAs 72 game season. But then again, ill try to avoid talking about that, because those seasons were like no other. And there is good reason for the NBA getting more national attention due to it not being as local as the MLB. But this doesn’t mean the MLB can’t bring in revenue. It has managed to bring in more because of its merchandise bought by its more loyal fans, get more watch time because of its loyal fans, have loyal fans come to games etc. All that together vs the NBAs source of revenue. And the fact that the MLB consistently brings in more revenue year in and year out, I think speaks more to the loyalty of its fans than anything. That correlates with how much time and money MLB fans have put into their team. In 2019 the MLB was 2nd in highest revenue among sports leagues across the world because of this…. Now, finally, this goes back to what I said about baseball being local. I’d like to show you this demographic of the local TV ratings in 7 major cities New York, LA, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas, Washington D.C and Houston.

As you can see, for every city except Dallas, the MLB is being more watched by its local area than the NBA. And I’ll end with this. This picture is exactly what I’ve been talking about. Major league baseball is a local sport. Its teams will dominate in its respective city, but what is limiting people from fully recognizing that baseball is still the hot stuff, is the fact that its not known as a sport where fans are going to be as interested in another team. And if u live in an area like Miami where the marlins play, and all you got is to rely on your local area with no huge background of success, you’re not going to be appealing to other people around America. That isn’t a knock, that just means that the MLB has a ton of fans, but just in its own team’s realm.