Major League Baseball could use a facelift.
Baseball may be America’s pastime, but if it wants to be more than the grumpy old guy at the table of the major professional sports leagues, changes need to be made to increase the game’s appeal — both domestically and internationally.
The NFL, the most popular pro sports league in the U.S., has found a way to adapt to the times, offering a new generation of fans infamous for limited attention spans with things like the Red Zone channel, which condenses games into bite-sized clips of just the good stuff: touchdowns. The league has also capitalized on fantasy football, which keeps the young, casual fan tuning in for regular season games between teams they would otherwise never watch.
Baseball, on the other hand, is losing popularity at an alarming rate. Television ratings for the World Series have fallen 40 percent in the past 25 years. MLB’s demographic is getting older, too. The average viewer of the 2014 World Series was 54.4 years old — compared to 49.9 in 2009.
With the rate of baseball’s decline showing no signs of slowing down, it would be surprising if the sport was still considered among the top five within the next two to three decades. Unless commissioner Rob Manfred can inject some new appeal into the sport — and I’m not talking about steroids.
One obvious avenue Manfred can take is expansion, which the commish said he was “open” to during the All-Star break in Cincinnati.
“Maybe one of the reasons I got this job is, I’m bullish on this game,” Manfred said. “I think we are a growth business, broadly defined. And over an extended period of time, growth businesses look to get bigger. So yeah, I’m open to the idea that there will be a point in time where expansion may be possible.”
While a portion of MLB’s current demographic undoubtedly cringes at the proposal of expansion, these are the types of reactions baseball needs to deal with in order to preserve the future of the sport.
According to ESPN.com’s Jerry Crasnick, Manfred has his sight set on a small group of cities if MLB does expands or relocates from existing locations: Montreal; Charlotte, North Carolina; San Antonio; Portland, Oregon; Las Vegas; Oklahoma City; northern New Jersey; Mexico City or Monterrey, Mexico.
Montreal is one of the cities that immediately jumps off the page as a viable host — as evidenced by the 96,000 fans who showed up for two exhibition games between the Toronto Blue Jays and Cincinnati Reds in March. Montreal has hosted MLB before — for the younger crowd, the Washington Nationals were once known as the Montreal Expos — providing MLB with an opportunity to reach new fans at an old stomping ground traditionalists will applaud.
That said, strong attendance to two exhibition games does not ensure the city will be able to consistently bring more fans to the stadium than the Tampa Bay Rays or Oakland Athletics — franchises rumored to be in-play for relocation to Montreal. The city will also need to construct a more modern stadium to replace the Expos’ old Olympic Stadium if it’s to be strongly considered for relocation efforts, according to Manfed.
If it’s not Montreal, the only other non-U.S. cities on Manfred’s list are Mexico City and Monterrey, Mexico. Manfred has suggested that relocation to Mexico or Canada is more likely than the U.S. and given baseball’s issues reaching the younger crowd on its home turf, it’s no surprise that Manfred eyes internationalization as the optimal way to create more appeal.
As of 2013, more than a quarter of MLB’s players were from Latin America and 27 percent had an Hispanic background — making Mexico and Caribbean countries seemingly natural fits. Mexico City, in particular, appears to have a built-in fan base with an estimated nine million residents in the city and 20 million total in the greater metropolitan area, according to WorldPopulationReview.com.
While expansion to U.S. cities like Las Vegas, Portland, Oregon and Charlotte, North Carolina sounds intriguing, none of these cities will provide the jolt in popularity MLB needs.
Furthermore, while international expansion provides MLB with a great opportunity for invigoration, it will only work if the sport’s leaders are also willing to make changes that will bring the game into the 21st century. For today’s younger fan, three-hour baseball games simply do not match up favorably with the back-and-forth pace of basketball and athletic feats witnessed on the gridiron.
However, if football — a sport in which the average game packs only 11 minutes of action into 185 minutes of a broadcast — can keep viewers coming back for more and more, there has to be a way MLB can adapt to the times without losing all traditionalists.
The proper navigation of this tightrope is more important to baseball than any of the other major sports, but if Manfred and company are able to take the right risks, the rewards could be great. MLB will never be able to keep everyone happy, but if it can add a young, international crowd and tinker with the game without selling its soul, it will at least ensure its place at the table — and go from the grumpy old guy to the wise one.