World Series sets record low TV ratings for every game - ouch

Yankees-Dodgers=Record high ratings

Dodgers-Rays=Record low ratings

The Rays don't have much of a fan base. And all the interest goes out of it with a neutral site baseball series.

As you imply political protests have nothing to do with low ratings for sports this year.

Any series with an LA team in it can't set all-time series lows by 30% and blame it on market size. LA/Tampa are bigger markets than SF/KC was several years back.

But yes, you sussed out my point.

Unfortunately for sports leagues all around the country, there is the harsh reality that the NFL is the only one that is not a niche sport to some degree. In some markets (Midwest, South), you can say the same for College Football and of course March Madness is still bulletproof.

For every other league (MLB, NHL, and NBA), unless you are the only game in the town (non-Election year will help a bit) or there's a really compelling narrative (Cubs trying to break drought et al.) big ratings with a huge number of casual fans is likely a thing of the past.

Some reasons for this:

MLB: very aging audience, highly regional (many fans only care when their team is in it), slow pace-of-play, less fun to watch with new analytics-based style of play (fewer balls in play, more pitching changes etc.)

NBA: very young audience that doesn't watch whole games, older audience maybe tuning out to stylistic changes, overemphasis on off-the-court drama and transactions ~ less focus on actual play

NHL: intensely regional, too many US markets that don't make sense and probably should be abandoned...

I do not disagree. I will say that the political crap killed off what little remaining interest I had.

The NFL is the only universally watchable sports league because of how it handles the salary cap. MLB and the NBA have "dynasties" (which basically makes the small market teams glorified minor leagues for the large market teams) because of their soft cap. Spoiler alert, the team with almost quadruple the salary of the other team won the World Series. Actually COVID may narrow the gap between the haves and the have nots because the large market teams are losing the most money this year.

Well, I watched every game and game 5 was one of the best World Series games I've ever seen.

Maybe the pandemic has given us a new perspective- there are more important things than watching a bunch of spoiled millionaires play a game.

This is a bad take. You can argue that the salary cap structure in the MLB is stupid. I agree with that. But you can't argue that small market teams can't compete. Sure, the rich team beat the poor team in this year's World Series, but the poor team still MADE IT TO THE WORLD SERIES! The Rays have the 4th LOWEST payroll in the majors, and they outperformed 25 teams who had a higher payroll. You can argue that this is a bad structure (and again, I would agree), but you can't say that the small market teams aren't able to compete. Clearly they can. The Royals won the World Series in 2015. The Tigers made it to the World Series in 2012. The Indians almost won the World Series in 2016. The Marlins have had multiple successful runs. Is it harder for a team with a low payroll to succeed? Of course. But is it impossible to the point of making it "unwatchable"? Not at all.

joedirt wrote:

The NFL is the only universally watchable sports league because of how it handles the salary cap. MLB and the NBA have "dynasties" (which basically makes the small market teams glorified minor leagues for the large market teams) because of their soft cap. Spoiler alert, the team with almost quadruple the salary of the other team won the World Series. Actually COVID may narrow the gap between the haves and the have nots because the large market teams are losing the most money this year.

coach wrote:

Maybe the pandemic has given us a new perspective- there are more important things than watching a bunch of spoiled millionaires play a game.

I think too many put too much psycho-babble into the reasoning behind the decline in ratings. I think it's much more real life changes than people sitting around reassessing whether they want to watch sports or not. This article puts some of this out there:

This is because of the BLM protests in sports. People don't want poltics in their sports. Right guys? Guys?

bkrunner wrote:

This is a bad take. You can argue that the salary cap structure in the MLB is stupid. I agree with that. But you can't argue that small market teams can't compete. Sure, the rich team beat the poor team in this year's World Series, but the poor team still MADE IT TO THE WORLD SERIES! The Rays have the 4th LOWEST payroll in the majors, and they outperformed 25 teams who had a higher payroll.

Also hurting this argument is the fact that the ratings for a World Series with any of the Red Sox, Yankees or Cubs would be better for MLB. All high-payroll teams.

Not to go overboard here, but I did a little research to illustrate how bad your take is. Below is a list of all the teams to make the playoffs this year. Next to their names, I have included their payroll ranking (with #1 indicating the highest payroll in the league): Yankees - 1 Dodgers - 2 Astros - 4 Cubs - 6 Cardinals - 9 Padres - 10 Braves - 13 Reds - 17 White Sox - 18 Blue Jays - 19 Twins - 20 Brewers - 23 Indians - 24 A's - 26 Rays - 27 Marlins - 28 A quick glance shows you that more teams from the BOTTOM HALF of MLB payrolls made the playoffs. In other words, poor teams actually had better outcomes than rich teams, generally speaking. Again, I think the salary rules need to be adjusted to level the playing field, but it's not fair to say that the salary rules are making the game unwatchable. In fact, if you didn't watch this year's World Series, you missed out on some amazing entertainment.

THOUGHTSLEADER wrote:

Also hurting this argument is the fact that the ratings for a World Series with any of the Red Sox, Yankees or Cubs would be better for MLB. All high-payroll teams.

Dodgers/Astros ratings were better than Dodgers/Red Sox, hurting your argument that subbing in the Red Sox for the Dodgers would bump ratings. They already had their big market team in the WS this year.

Why do people care so much about these TV ratings anyway?

If you like it, watch it.

If not, don't.

I think we're all fans of running and those ratings are always terrible.

Ratings for all TV shows and sporting events have been declining for years because there are more choices and DVRs.

joedirt wrote:

The NFL is the only universally watchable sports league because of how it handles the salary cap. MLB and the NBA have "dynasties" (which basically makes the small market teams glorified minor leagues for the large market teams) because of their soft cap. Spoiler alert, the team with almost quadruple the salary of the other team won the World Series. Actually COVID may narrow the gap between the haves and the have nots because the large market teams are losing the most money this year.

There are a number of reasons for the declining ratings. Some peopl have already said some good stuff.

1) There's a lot of other shit you can do. You can find your perfect niche now on the Internet. 40 years ago, you had 3 channels to watch. When I was a kid we moved to Chicago one summer. My brother and I apparently watched baeball all summer as we didn't know anyone and the Cubs only played in the day so that's what was on.

2) I liked the guy who talked about the salary cap. I'd also l ike to add in free agency. A big part of sports is rooting for your team and against others but it's hard to do this if the players are changing so much.

Back in the day, a kid in Cleveland could fall in love with the Cavs and Lebron or a kid in Boston could fall in love with Mookie and the Red Sox. 15 years later,when they went ot college, it would be the same star and same player. Now Lebron has gone to Miami and crushed then, then you were told to forgive him when he returned, then he left again, etc.

3. The games are too expensive, on too many obscure cable channels and are on too late at night to attract new fans. How are you supposed to get kids to fall in love with the game if their parents have to pay$500 to take him or her to the game? If they can't watch most games because they start at like 9 pm.?

Plus the leagues screw the adult fans as well. Let's say you are a baseball fan. You devote 150 nights of your year to your team. Then they make the playoffs and MLB puts 2 of 4 1st round playoff games in the middle of the day when you are at work and can't watch it.

If small market teams are glorified Minor Leaguers, how dd Tampa Bay make it to the World Series?

zxcvxzcv wrote:

Yankees-Dodgers=Record high ratings

Dodgers-Rays=Record low ratings

The Rays don't have much of a fan base. And all the interest goes out of it with a neutral site baseball series.

As you imply political protests have nothing to do with low ratings for sports this year.

Aside from Mookie and Kershaw, the Dodgers players are horribly boring also. I watched the ALCS to see if the Astros would win, and the Padres-Dodgers NLDS because the Padres are a blast to watch. A Yankees-Dodgers series wouldn't have captured my interest.

grumpyoldman wrote:

zxcvxzcv wrote:

Yankees-Dodgers=Record high ratings

Dodgers-Rays=Record low ratings

The Rays don't have much of a fan base. And all the interest goes out of it with a neutral site baseball series.

As you imply political protests have nothing to do with low ratings for sports this year.

Aside from Mookie and Kershaw, the Dodgers players are horribly boring also. I watched the ALCS to see if the Astros would win, and the Padres-Dodgers NLDS because the Padres are a blast to watch. A Yankees-Dodgers series wouldn't have captured my interest.

I actually watched loads of playoff games. Baseball was my first sport. I love it, coached most of my sons' teams for 16 years while they were growing up, became an umpire, so I pay a lot of attention to the sport. The payroll discrepancy is a big issue but the Rays had the third smallest in the league and make it to the post season pretty frequently as have the A's, Twins, and Brewers. This year's World Series was a classic David vs. Goliath match which in my opinion, made it as interesting as something like Dodgers-Yankees would have been.

The huge problem I see with MLB now is the way the game is played. The emphasis on the home run for hitters and strike outs for pitchers means long at bats as hitters try to work the count and look for a pitch to "drive" and pitchers get to 0-2 or 1-2 counts then begin nibbling at the edge of the strike zone trying to get a batter to chase a pitch that's out of the zone and strike out. Hitters are now supposed to work on "launch angle," because you have to get the ball in the air to hit a homer. No one wants a ground ball anymore.

The result is games where most batters either strike out, fly out, walk, or homer. Home runs are great but when they only happen 3-6 times a game and are almost all that ever happens you have boring games that take well over three hours to play. Historically in baseball fielders, not pitchers, were supposed to get hitters out. If you can find videos of games from forty or more years ago you find that they were played in much less time and that 2-2, 3-2 (which often require even more than 4 or 5 pitches as balls are fouled off) counts were much more rare. If a batter found a pitch he thought he could hit he'd swing at it no matter if it was the first or fifth pitch of the at bat. You had more hits, more balls in play, more action, and quicker games.

I think one cause that hasn't been discussed is the social aspect of watching sports. In previous years I would spend most Sunday's in a bar watching NFL games and my wife would go as well for at least half the games just to hang out. With social restrictions, how many people simply aren't tuning in because they won't be able to sit down and enjoy the time with friends?

I think these people are realizing the socialization of watching a game is half the reason they watch in the first place. If they can't watch with other people what's the point? I do feel a bit strange sometimes sitting by myself for 2.5 hours watching a game.