A terrific observation, IMO. Essentially, it's a sense that "all these people can't be wrong." Which is why I maintain seeing active, vibrant crowds at MLS games is important, even for those watching on TV who will never set foot in a stadium. It conveys a sense of spectacle.
Eh that sort of did happen on a small scale in Kansas City last year. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we22iVDILwI"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we22iVDILwI[/ame]
IMHO, the "baseball is dying" meme is just as shortsighted as the "soccer will never be popular" one. They are both the result of people projecting their personal feeling about a sport and generalizing.
Exactly We're a nation of 310 million people as opposed to 281 million in 2000 and 265 million in 1996 when MLS started. There is more than enough growth and replacement in the US population to support baseball's popularity at it's current level beyond all of our lifetimes as well as to support MLS becoming the highest attended league in the world. There's just too many assfaces around here that can't see the big picture.
To an extent, Houston was able to enjoy that kind of bandwagon buzz feel during their championship runs and during the MLS Cup run last year. Not to the level of RSL, and not to what KC could have if they followed through, but from what I know it did turn heads. In truth, all of our teams are capable of playoff mini-buzzes, but it usually doesn't happen until the conference finals. Full blown buzzes are only possible in a handful of places. "Baseball is dying" is only supported by television numbers. The gate receipts, as Stan mentioned, are thriving.
National TV numbers. I'm under the impression that local TV numbers for MLB teams are still very strong and is indicated by the massive escalation in value of local TV deals for teams -- we are seeing teams getting $70 million a year for just local TV rights. I suspect that the phenomena we are seeing in MLB is that fans by and large just watch/follow their local teams, which basically can satisfy their hunger for the sport since the local team plays virtually every day for 6 months and provide plenty of content.
Two things about MLB: 1. It's a local game. National OTA TV has bounced among all four networks (with most not bothering to bid) for a reason. Fox doesn't show the entire country one game for a reason. Most baseball fans already have a game to watch, featuring their home club, on any given day. 2. MLB has deliberately and very blatantly been courting families for the past 20 years. Right now they have a commissioner-for-life who believes the 16-to-39-year-old is not a target market (or that the demo is a given, which is even more dangerous) and that their actual target market would riot if they stopped playing "God Bless America" midway through every game on weekends. One day that will change. Not yet, because they're still riding the biggest attendance and local-TV wave they've ever had, and Selig's still alive, but when it does, they'll look at MLS and ask, "how can we get fans like that?"
That would probably require ratings over the past 30 years, and then we would have to revisit this thread in another 30 years to see the overall long term trend of declining ratings. People in this country are still largely being brought up on a diet of baseball, basketball and AmF. It may be that we are not even yet at the tipping point of declining ratings, because while the country is greying, older demographics and baby boomers in general haven't started dropping like flies yet. Don't know why people seem to think that long term trends can be proved wrong or right by looking at a limited set of data from the current environment.
I think what's actually going on is people think it's stupid to say that something is in decline just because you don't like it. It's stupid when people say soccer will never be anything in America just because they don't like it. It's equally as stupid to say that baseball is going away because you and your friends on a soccer message board don't like it.
You're right, I hate baseball. Now that we've got that out the way, data from Japan, the US and Venezuela (3 of the biggest baseballing countries in the world) show that soccer has a larger younger following than baseball in all 3 countries. This isn't just an anomaly. All 3 countries were dominated by baseball at some stage in their life cycle. Baseball was usurped by football in the US decades ago, but retain their status as the major sport in ******/Ven. Despite that, in US/******/Ven, all 3 are seeing soccer as having bigger fanbases in younger demos. There is a strong pattern here. All things being equal, and assuming we don't find an elixir for everlasting life, we can fairly easily come to the conclusion that baseballs fanbase, in comparison to soccer, will level off. This is like trend spotting 101. If a sport is replenishing its fanbase quicker than another, its only fair to assume that as time goes on, the discrepancy that once existed will begin to get smaller. These trends are so slow that I may not even be alive to witness it in fruition, but we are in the early stages of that trend taking place in all 3 of these nations. The tipping point may still be 2-3 decades off, if not longer. Baby boomers are still plentiful, and traditional sports continue to trounce soccer because we aren't yet beyond the point where demographics begin to work in soccer's favour. This is ESPECIALLY true of Japan. That is a demographic disaster if I've ever seen one, and baseball will be hit hard once it starts taking effect. Its population will decline by a third by 2060 at current replacement levels (from 120m to 80m). That is a societal nightmare. And the majority of those people were brought up on baseball, not soccer. Soccer has something that promotes popularity. And its not that its better than baseball or something naive like that, but the sport has characteristics of a virus; one that is clearly more potent than others judging by the evidence. There is nothing to suggest that the US is immune just because baseball has tradition.
If I were guessing at the revenue discrepancy between Major League Baseball and Major League Soccer currently, I would guess it would be in the vicinity of 50:1. 25 years from now, I would be very surprised if that sort of ratio still existed. I think there's a greater possibility that that numerator will be in single digits than that it will be where it is now. That's optimism (because I'm figuring that's probably more about MLS growth than any dramatic decline in baseball revenues over that period [I think the danger for baseball, if there is any, lies for the most part beyond that time scale]), but I think it's defensible optimism.
Nobody is doubting or contesting this. In fact, myself and many others that are merely stating that "the death of baseball is greatly exaggerated" have helped provide some of the "trend spotting" you're talking about. However, the comment in question was about TV Ratings. Someone said that the death of baseball is evident in them. However, that's not the case. That's also not the same thing as saying that there isn't anything out there pointing to a shift with baseball. I did a 5 second google search when I made that comment above and found that last year's WS ratings, while down, still were the highest rated shows on. Also, the 18-49 demographic was led by the WS games. But that baseball fanbase is baby boomer and older (with some quasi-boomers/generation X'rs tossed in) ... yet the 18-49 demographic suggests otherwise. I just want people to back up their comments with something other than ... "yeah I hate baseball."
-comparing stats, ratings, $ among all these sports is really hard due to number of teams, number of games, size of stadiums etc. - I would be totally happy if soccer were just mentioned in the same breath and treated equal in the news/tv/newspapers etc. major media - we all know soccer fans know when the games are, where to find them etc. We have been through this for years. We know about our love of the game. I think we simply want others to recognize all the special things about our game and give it some respect. - So in the meantime, lets keep on our course with new stadiums, teams, some exciting players, solid finances (no teams in huge debts), work slowly on building up ratings etc. Our time will come. - And as fans, lets do our part by trying to bring in new fans to the game and ramp up the excitement at our games.
This is true. Though I think that the most comparable figures from sport to sport would likely be in the $ category. Figures like franchise values and merchandise sales aren't as skewed by number of games played in a season.
Re: Tuesday, April 24, 2012 Same age as you... we have very different friends. Then again, I'm from Oklahoma (where there is almost no soccer) and went to college in Texas (where lots of people play but don't follow soccer).
Anecdotally, baseball seems like something that a lot of people start to get into as they get older. Baseball games are great for families, and the stadiums tend to be more family-oriented than their equivalents in other sports. I'm a DC United season ticket holder, but I end up going to as many Nationals games every year as I do United games. And I'm more likely to go to a baseball game with my wife and kids than I am to take them to a soccer game. MLS has chased the holy grail of the younger fan, which is cool. But that fan demographic isn't the only one out there, despite what people in that age group might think. And when you go to a Nationals game, you see many more people pulling up in a Lexus or Mercedes than you do at a United game.
I think that's sort of a nagging worry in the back of baseball's mind, though, because that's not traditionally the age at which sports fans pick up the loyalties that they really take with them. Including Baseball, where for 100 years, the sport was ritualistically picked up during the older child/teenage years, when pro sports goes from something your parents (stereotypically, Dad) takes you to and you're not sure about it, to something you're itching to go to even more than they are. For a long time, soccer had the problem of being to get 8 year olds and their parents to go to games (and btw, the quiet side at RFK still strikes me as a pretty pro-family experience), without being able to make that take root into fandom they'd carry with them later on. I remember going to Dallas Sideckicks games (who as an indoor team had the problem worse, and never got past it) in the 1980s, and seeing a stadium full of young kids and parents, and the kids seemed to be quite pleased by all the lightshow and music and Tatu taking his shirt off. About 10 years later, as a teen, I went back to a game, and the problem was, to quote Dazed and Confused, I got older, and they just stayed the same age.
With apologies for quoting my earlier post, but this link was posted in the ratings thread -- note the tone of the tweets regarding the ESPN Manchester derby: http://deadspin.com/5906430/id-rath...d-other-complaints-about-soccer-being-on-espn Markovits and Rensmann would have a field day with this bunch.
What's really worrying about some of those tweets is how close-minded those people are. What hostility!
I guess this would fit into "popularity"....playing in Portland is too much pressure, says this author. http://mobile.oregonlive.com/advorg/pm_100886/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=zmV5m5Gc
The hostility is a sign that soccer is going places. It will only get worse as the league and sport grows. You don't really see people bashing AmF or baseball on British sites, because those sports are so insignificant that there is nothing to fear. Its a hostility borne out of fear. Don't mistake it for anything else. I still don't understand why Portland is viewed as a 2nd tier market. Can anyone actually explain this one? It has more things going for it than quite a few basketball and hockey markets. Oklahoma City over Portland? Really?
Stumbled across this article. It's the same story in every country that has not traditionally had a proclivity for the game. Even though its not US related, and the challenges are perhaps smaller than they are here, its still pertinent to show that these widespread examples are pointing to only thing in the future. This one is quite a good read and also shows how protective the older generation is of baseball. Edit: Link to another Cuba story from the NYTimes dated 1st May 2012: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/02/world/americas/soccer-gains-in-cuba-where-baseball-is-king.html http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=68635
