Baseball is back. But what’s going on with it?
Major League Baseball is often regarded as the hardest major sport to play. It’s a grueling 162 games, not including spring training and playoffs, a season that takes anywhere from two and a half to four hours to play daily. With that, comes the delegation of its having some of the highest-paid athletes in history. MLB players make exorbitant amounts of money, teams are getting rich or selling off, the everyday fan is being priced out, and the casual fan is bored to tears.
What’s going on with baseball, where is it going, and who can save it?
Baseball has a dilemma. The sport’s popularity has waned since the home-run races of the late 90s and early 2000s. Many of the household names of America’s pastime ended up linked to steroids or are now long retired. Baseball had been resembling more of a chess match with analytic teams “knowing” more than managers. The games were running three to four hours every night, no one was stealing bases, everyone was striking out or walking, and “launch angle” had become the rage.
To put it simply, baseball had grown less exciting. Young people weren’t watching it, older generations were stuck on the “back in my day,” and the MLB was as good at marketing their players as they were at pretending steroids weren’t a problem. Most of that was written in past tense because, finally, after years of struggling, baseball began to address the problem.
Last year, the league made changes to the replay system to limit time and amounts. In extra innings, a runner starts on second base. Pitchers have to face three batters or finish an inning before they can be removed. The bases got bigger and pickoffs are now limited to three with the third having to result in picking off the runner. Finally, the literal timeless sport added a pitch clock with strict rules on batters stepping in the box and pitchers being ready to throw.
While many baseball lifers were against these rule changes because “this isn’t the baseball of my day,” the new systems worked.
According to Yahoo:
According to Nielsen data compiled from Opening Day on March 30 through Tuesday, June 27, of this year, MLB’s national broadcast and cable windows across Fox, ESPN, FS1 and TBS are averaging 923,689 viewers per game, for a net gain of nearly 200,000 fans per outing. Zero in on the big weekend packages and the boosts are less eye-popping, yet still significant; the Fox and ESPN productions are up 4% to 1.63 million viewers per game, an improvement that flies in the face of an attendant 11% decline in overall TV usage.
Ironically, baseball more closely resembles the game of yesteryear as most finish under three hours, stolen bases have risen tremendously, and the shift has been limited. The result is a more fun product that has resulted in fresh excitement around the game. But is it enough?
Even with ratings and attendance on the way up, the numbers are still down from even 10 to 15 years ago. During that time, the high price of player contracts has continued to climb. In turn, the cost of tickets, food, and beverages have skyrocketed as well. It’s a catch-22 because if more people fill the ballparks and support the product, prices can come down, but if everything is too expensive, people won’t come out. On the flip side, the price of players is not going to come down because why would it?
Just this past off-season, the Dodgers created the MonStars of the baseball world. They already boasted one of the MLB’s finest rosters and then kept adding, spending over a billion dollars in contracts.
Arguably the greatest player to ever live, Shohei Ohtani, received a $700 million contract. The Dodgers unlocked a cheat code by giving him $2 million a year for 10 years, and then $68 million for 10 years after he’s long gone. His countryman, Yoshinobu Yamamoto received a 12-year deal worth $325 million just a few weeks later. These numbers are absurd, especially for a sport that ranks third behind the NFL and NBA in the United States.
There lies the answer to America’s favorite pastime. The U.S. is not going to save baseball, the international market is.
According to CNBC, Ohtani makes $50 million a year in endorsements, that’s why he can be fine with $2 million a year. Spectrum News reported:
If Ohtani is marketed right, he’s a globally iconic player,” said Mike Lewis, a professor of marketing at Emory University who specializes in sports business. “It could be like something from Formula One, where you’ve got the attention of the whole world. Baseball has sometimes struggled to gain national attention, but he’s the kind of guy who attacts millions of eyeballs, and not just from the U.S.
To hammer in that point, Ohtani has over three million more followers on his Instagram account than the Dodgers. During the World Baseball Classic, Ohtani was gaining millions of followers a day as the world got to see him perform.
Lars Nootbaar of the St. Louis Cardinals got to play with team Japan during the WBC. In an interview with Chris Rose, he described Ohtani as a “god-like” figure in Japan. They couldn’t go anywhere without Ohtani being the focus or getting attention.
In Japan, baseball is militant. A one-hour documentary by Baseball Doesn’t Exist describes the conditions baseball players go through during their quest for baseball excellence. Kids younger than 10 are doing eight-hour practices every day. The men are in dorms together and not allowed to see their wives or girlfriends. There have been instances where players dropped dead on the field due to exhaustion. In return, these players receive adoration and are superheroes in Japan. Every round of the WBC with Japan in it crushed the TV ratings of any MLB World Series.
The Japanese fans have been showing up in droves for their players since Hideo Nomo in the 90s on through Ichiro and now Yamamoto and Ohtani. This is why so many Japanese players are coming over to the States and being given lucrative deals without ever playing here. The upside for fan attendance, TV ratings, and merch sales is through the roof. The billion the Dodgers spent for their two Japanese stars will probably net them over $2 billion in revenue.
Many of the top stars in the sport are from other countries that are more ravenous for baseball than American audiences. The Dominican Republic, Cuba, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Korea, Mexico, and even Israel have vested interests in players. The international market is thriving and generating global capital for the MLB.
This is how baseball can lag behind the NFL and the NBA, but still be in a good place monetarily.
Superstars from all over the world are helping the owners willing to spend and driving up the price of player salaries. The owners recoup their money from international audiences, and the everyday fan struggles to keep up.
It skews the reality of the “struggle” that baseball is having. For small market teams that can’t compete with these high-priced free agents, it will continue to be a problem for them. The debacle going on with the Oakland A’s is top of mind. This is a historic and well-decorated franchise, and they’ve been reduced to a joke because of cheap ownership. The Rays and Marlins (of late) have found ways to be successful pinching pennies without huge stars; instead drafting and creating their own and shipping them off. The Braves set themselves up for the future by cultivating future stars, signing them early, and then filling in the gaps with veterans.
Then you have the New York Mets and the San Diego Padres who spent insane amounts of money to each have a great season and a laughably bad season as two of the highest-priced teams of all-time.
The end game of baseball for the U.S. population doesn’t seem crystal clear. The separation between big market and small market teams has never been higher. The contracts have never been higher either. The ratings and attendance for the game are starting to creep slowly back up but not at the same rate as the inflated prices.
However, the growth of the international market and its diverse superstars keep major league baseball a powerhouse of relevance. Ohtani is just the beginning of the power players’ brands bring to a sport. Perhaps the NBA recognizes this best. For all the Mike Trout’s, Bryce Harper’s, and Jacob deGrom’s, their combined impact and influence will never touch some of the middle-level stars of the other major sports. But you know who will and who already has? Shohei Ohtani.