Baseball Can Become America's Pastime Again by Cutting Season to 100 Games

This year’s edition of the World Series, pitting the St. Louis Cardinals against the Texas Rangers, was a series worth remembering. The series went seven games and featured record- breaking performances, great storylines, and plenty of drama. It was no surprise that Game 7 brought in 25.4 million viewers in America.

However, it’s not often that baseball posts monster television numbers like it did last Friday. This was the first time they posted these kind of ratings since 2004. Unless urgency is involved like in Game 7, baseball generally sits behind football in ratings.

SHORTER SEASON, MORE HYPE:

If baseball wants to create more excitement and hype in their games year-round like it did in this year’s World Series, then it needs to shorten its regular season and start their playoffs in August, one of two months where three of the four major sports are in their offseason. Fewer games will result in more meaningful games in the regular season, which will draw more fans to the gate and more eyeballs to television screens. This, in turn, will allow owners to raise ticket prices and generate more revenue from television deals and ad sales.

WHAT RECESSION?

The NCAA gets it. So do the NFL, NHL, and NBA. In an increasingly frenetic society, these sports constantly adapt by tweaking rules, marketing stars, and progressing their sport in order to create more urgency in games and draw more fans in.

Games become more appealing to fans when there is urgency involved. In the NFL and college football, the season is significantly shorter than baseball’s season. Baseball has 162 regular season games. Simple logic tells us that one NFL game in a 16-game schedule is equivalent to 10 MLB games in a 162-game schedule. This means that the regular season doesn’t mean much.

When games don’t mean much, fans don’t have the incentive to watch or attend games, especially when there are so many other options in this day in age. In contrast, one single NFL game being worth ten baseball games exemplifies the importance of the game. Fans are drawn in to watch the game because a win or loss can heavily affect the outcome of a team’s season. 

People are always busy with family, work, and other spontaneous events. That’s why the brevity of the NFL and college football seasons make it attractive for busy people to enjoy sports. Because of this, the NFL’s revenues have been going through the roof. They locked up a major deal with ESPN recently in which the network will be paying the league $2 billion annually.

It’s not just football, though. The NHL, in another recession year, drew in close to $3 billion in revenues last season. And finally, despite going through a lockout, the NBA is still in relatively good shape. Their television ratings for this year’s NBA Finals were extremely strong. The league also has the benefit of marketing international stars like Kobe Bryant and LeBron James.

LEFT BEHIND THE PACK:

Until this year’s World Series, baseball had been struggling compared to the other four major sports. They are the least progressive of the four major sports. For instance, they were the last to adopt instant replay to review calls from officials in their sport. The sport is run by old men in suits with gray hair and it seems like those are the only people watching the sport, too, looking at the demographics.

Just recently, a Sunday Night Football game on NBC featuring the New Orleans Saints and the Indianapolis Colts—who have lost star quarterback Peyton Manning for the rest of the season— outdrew Game 4 of the World Series in terms of television ratings in the 18-49 demographic age range. Nationally though, the World Series outdrew Sunday Night Football.

In other words, more young people watched a blowout football game ending with a score of 62-7 over a championship baseball game following one of the greatest individual performances in World Series history the night before, when Albert Pujols belted three home runs for St. Louis.

This does not bode well for baseball’s future. The fact that younger fans are turning away from the sport says that MLB will struggle for years to come unless they don’t take action. However, looking at baseball’s track record, it takes them a long time to take action and be progressive.

The best example of this is by just looking at the means of communication between the baseball manager and the bullpen. They might as well be using a rotary phone. The phone in the dugout looks like a wired phone straight from 1982. In the NFL, coaches and quarterbacks have wireless communication. Quarterbacks have high tech speakers in their helmets so they can hear the plays the coaches are calling.

The NFL was wise to be progressive and make the game easier and quicker. They acclimate to make the game more marketable for fans. The point is, baseball has never been progressive and now this is hurting them drastically. The regular season is way too long, and individual games have become epic poems with ALCS games averaging 3 hours, 40 minutes this year in length and NLCS games averaging 3 hours and 27 minutes.

The NCAA produces breathtaking college football games in their regular season multiple times annually. Baseball can’t do that because of the lack of urgency in their games, and they are unwilling to change because as mentioned above, they aren’t progressive.

Baseball’s television ratings are declining. Gone are the days of having two smaller-market team like Minnesota and Atlanta meet in the World Series and have a whopping TV rating of over 30, like they did in 1991. This year's Game 7, as exciting as it was, didn’t even have half that number. Game 3 drew the second-lowest rating in World Series history. This trend of declining ratings means that ad sales will diminish and future television negotiations will not be favorable for the once dominant league.

Jeff Passan of Yahoo! Sports recently wrote an article downplaying the low ratings, saying that the World Series’ excitement and the quality of play overshadowed the ratings, and that it is the American people’s loss for missing these games. He asks, “Why does baseball insist on comparing itself to the NFL?”

He may be right in conceding the title of king in sports television to the NFL, but the fact of the matter is baseball’s TV ratings have declined in comparison to itself from previous years. It’s one thing to be down compared to football. Everything is infinitesimal when compared to the giant NFL, which had 111 million viewers watch the Super Bowl last season.

This does not bode well for advertising rates being charged by FOX. Ad rates may have increased 8 percent from last year’s World Series, but low ratings for another year will change the trend.

Declining television ratings and the dominance of the NFL requires Major League Baseball to take stringent and desperate action to become the national pastime once again. The sport will survive where it is now, but in order to gain national recognition as the country’s number one sport, it needs change drastically.

A BOLD, YET ENTERTAINING OPTION

In the fast, frenetic society we live in today, baseball has actually done a great job of having a social media presence, which has helped fans at least know what’s going on in the long marathon season. That being said, people have lives and don’t have time to sit and watch three and a half hour games nightly for 162 days. If games are more meaningful, then people will have the incentive to watch games.

Baseball needs to slash the regular season to 100 games. This way teams can raise ticket prices for their games. With fewer games, it makes sense to increase ticket prices because of the law of supply and demand. When there are fewer games, demand will increase. Also, the fact that there are fewer games means that the games become more urgent. Each win means a whole lot more, so it will attract more audiences in the regular season both on television and in person.

By ending the season in August, the playoffs will begin in early August and end in mid-September. Adding more playoff teams because of the shorter regular season then becomes a necessary change because the shorter regular season means that the sample size of regular season games is not large enough to determine the best teams from the season. Therefore, a larger playoff is needed.

By having more playoff teams, say 12 rather than 8, this generates more interest in more markets. This will create a buzz unlike any other during playoff time and increase revenues for four more teams. Playoff games tend to draw more fans than regular season games, so this means that teams will be raking in cash easily.

Most importantly, August is prime real estate for sports. It’s just before the NFL and NCAA football season begins, and right after the NHL and NBA seasons end. There is absolutely nothing important on during August aside from the US Open in tennis, which is a niche sport when compared to baseball. Fans have nothing entertaining to watch.

Having the World Series in early September will maximize TV ratings and this means more popularity for the sport, ad rates, and more time on sports talk radio. This, in turn, will increase hype for fans which will directly result in higher TV ratings, higher ad sales, and more revenue.

Use simple logic to think about that scenario. Let’s say the World Series is on during the same time as a Monday Night Football game or a heavily watched college football game. Naturally, the ratings will be dispersed among all sports fans. With nothing else on except for pressure packed baseball playoff games, more people will watch those games.

Finally, playoff games in the late summer will mean fewer rain delays. Everyone remembers Game 5 of the 2008 World Series and how it had to be played over two nights because of the rainy weather in Philadelphia. Right now, the playoffs end in late October and, occasionally, early November. Having rain delays and postponements hurts viewership. Nobody wants to sit through a two-hour rain delay.

SO WHAT’S NEXT FOR BASEBALL?

The league will never cut down its schedule to 100 games. Purists argue that shortening the season will hurt the sanctity of the records in the game. But one can argue that the steroid era already desecrated many of baseball's records.

Another problem is that by shortening the regular season, owners of teams will have fewer home games for their teams. Instead of 81 games, they’ll have only 50. That’s 31 fewer home games and 31 fewer opportunities to make money, which won’t fly well with the owners. However, by having fewer home games, they can increase ticket prices. NBA and NHL teams only have 41 home games and ticket prices are generally higher than for MLB games. While it’s only six dollars for the cheapest ticket at a Dodger game, it’s 18 dollars for the cheapest ticket at a Clippers game, and they’ve been profitable historically.

Finally, as mentioned before, fewer games means the games are more exciting. Fewer games on the schedule means more pressure-packed situations to draw in viewers. That, in turn, makes the game’s revenues increase and can bring baseball back as the pastime that it once was.