The Tug-of-War Between a Better Season and Better World Series Ratings
We’re talking about World Series ratings again? Seriously?
I sometimes feel like I’m screaming into an empty void about the obviousness of the situation with baseball.
The Wild Card Era of baseball that started in the mid-1990s has created a level of chaos that makes baseball the absolute best product for the regular season, significantly better than the NBA and NHL, with only the NFL matching it in season-long quality by always providing intrigue in the form of weekly upsets and each game having so much value (while also having a drastically unbalanced schedule that fans always seem to forgive or not even realize).
But with the magical sporting surrealism of baseball, where anybody can beat anybody at any given time, and you just never know who might be the hero/villain of the day, MLB’s regular season television, radio, and attendance numbers have remained very strong and have improved dramatically under the new rules. I hate admitting that Manfred was right about something, but indeed these new sports-altering changes have actually helped the game and has brought in a new audience.
The caveat however is that because the talent pool nowadays is so deep, because baseball is so unpredictable, and now because there are more playoff slots than ever before, it creates a situation where the national mainstream audience can’t quite figure out how to back any of the competitive horses. This makes baseball the most regional-centric sport in all of North America outside of probably the NHL—especially now that we have 12 playoff spots available and 15-20 teams each year being within striking distance of a playoff berth all the way up to the final month.
The sheer unpredictability all the way until the end as the door to enter the postseason is much wider makes it harder to build actual anticipation for what might happen next---I promise you nobody in Vegas had a 2023 World Series featuring the Texas Rangers and Arizona Diamondbacks. During the peak-ratings years the MLB enjoyed, you only had 4 playoff spots overall, by mid-August you knew what teams were going to make it to the postseason.
Source: Baseball Reference
Look at the 1986 season for example and check out the gap between the leaders and the third and fourth place teams, teams that likely surrendered by early August because there were no Wild Card slots to swipe, it was whether the entire division or nothing at all. Its much easier for sports fans to already prepare for the matchups in October, today’s baseball lacks this lengthy expectation.
For more proof, here’s the standings on August 8th, 1986. Source: Baseball Reference
This isn’t a complaint either, I still absolutely love my MLB flaws and all, but I’m not going to deny its impact on World Series ratings. Those numbers in the last several years outside of the infamous curse-lifting 2016 World Series are very regional-based.
Compounding this issue is how the World Series is broadcast, with ancient dated mannerisms, beliefs, and obstacles. This game isn’t available in any channel that isn’t Fox. The World Series doesn’t have multiple viewing options, not even Spanish-language broadcasts, you won’t find it on YouTube, Twitch, even the damn MLB app itself.
Baseball is already such a marathon, why restrict the number of ways to consume it?
What makes this image funny is that the league runs THIS VERY PROGRAM and they’re STILL not allow to air the game——they can be on TV before and after, but -during- there’s no actual secondary optional broadcast. Wild behavior from the executives with the expensive suits.
The final round of baseball also does this bizarre thing where they start the game at 8:00 P.M. despite a lack of an overall game clock, even having that start time during the weekend. On the other side, the 2022 World Cup final started at 10:00 A.M., on a Sunday morning---with California having to watch the game at 7:00 A.M.---and it still drew an audience of 25 million plus. Regional appeal, lack of viewing options, terrible time slot, lack of expected anticipation, and the playoff system creating more surprises and giant-killers all contributes to the World Series ratings being a small fraction of what they used to be----but it doesn’t at all mean the sport is dying or people aren’t interested.
Problem is, the league is still doing outdated techniques of creating sporting content. Not even having Univision or Telemundo display the games despite Spanish being the second-most spoken language in the country and making up a vast percentage of players and fans of the sport itself is wildly stupid to the point of criminal. Baseball is a game that relies heavily on being able to link to its expansive past, but it doesn’t mean we have to view these games using outdated 20th century tactics.
If we’re willing to evolve the game, then we have to also be willing to evolve the ways in which we view the game. Yes there has been improvement, but this progress has been way too slow and the playoff ratings are suffering from it.
Baseball is far from finished, there’s a lot of powerful positive momentum with this new generation of players and these brand-new rules and scheduling fixtures that have broken down some of the obstacles held up by the old-school fans. But MLB cannot have its cake and eat it too, you can’t slightly devalue the regular season and the division crown with more playoff spots and expect those giant World Series ratings of the 1970s, 80s, and 90s with the current restrictions.
Maybe its time to split the season in two?
Maybe reduce the number of Wild Card teams?
Maybe it’s time to have the World Series every 2-3 years as opposed to every year (that format would involve a tourney featuring only the AL and NL champs of the previous seasons)?
You can’t offer regular season improvements, keep the restrictions when technology offers so much more potential, and expect 15-25 million viewers watching the World Series. Its not feasible.
Appreciate the vastly-improved regular season, even if it means less viewers come late October/early November. But if you can’t do that, then go back to the drawing board and be open to evolving the game and the way we watch said game much, much more.