Is baseball getting less popular?
MLB attendance peaked in 2007 and has been gradually declining since, and that drop has accelerated in recent years.
A recent Gallup poll shows that only 9 percent of people in the United States are listing baseball as their favorite sport. That's the lowest number since Gallup started asking the question in 1937. Recent statistics also show that ballpark attendance is down in 19 of the 30 stadiums around the league.
About 60% of baseball fans say they're losing interest in the season because of the labor dispute, but only about a third say they'll watch fewer games as a result. Poll taken March 3-7 among 3,768 adults nationwide, including 1,523 who said they were baseball fans. SurveyMonkey-Los Angeles Times poll.
While football and basketball are now the most popular and financially successful of the four major professional sports leagues, Major League Baseball appears to be rallying.
Television viewership in 2021 was down 12% from 2019, and the average age of baseball fans is 57. That's much older than any of the other major sports (the NBA's average is just 42), and baseball's fans are getting older year by year. The average age in 2006 was 52.
Concerns about the MLB's waning popularity will only increase with the release of the league's attendance numbers for the 2022 season. The MLB saw a 5.7% decline in total attendance from the 2019 season, according to a report from Forbes. In the 2022 season, MLB posted a total attendance of 67,556,636.
State of play: Season-ticket sales are down 10% this year, to which MLB chief revenue officer Noah Garden attributes much of the decline, per Sportico (subscription). That makes sense: Some fans may have soured on the league after the 99-day lockout, and money is tight with inflation at a 40-year high.
MLB Attendance For 2022 Down Nearly 6% From 2019, Last Year Before The Pandemic.
Cross country, swimming and diving and competitive spirit registered the biggest decline in the past three years among Top 10 sports with a 13 percent drop. Flag football and girl's wrestling continued their recent surge in popularity with a 50 percent increase since 2018/19 (21,124 to 31,654).
Miami Marlins
The Marlins had the worst record in the National League by far and do not seem close to competing for the postseason. They've only made the postseason twice in franchise history, and the fact that they won the World Series in both of those appearances is the only reason they aren't in the top 25.
Is interest in sports declining?
Sports leagues, especially Major League Baseball, are seeing declines in younger viewership. The change comes as people turn away from traditional TV viewing and toward social media, video games and streaming TV, a trend that has only grown during the Covid-19 pandemic, reports The Wall Street Journal.
Football/Soccer
250 million people play the sport in 200 different countries, and there are around 3.5 billion fans worldwide. The next three most popular sports are field hockey, which has 2.2 billion fans globally, basketball, and cricket, which has 2.5 billion fans (2 billion).
The anecdotal factors at hand – a deadened baseball, the use of humidors in every major league stadium, expanded pitching staffs to mitigate a 99-day lockout – conspired to send batting average to its lowest level (. 233) in history and runs scored to its second-lowest total (4.08 per team game) in 41 years.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Baseball has been losing fans for decades. Fewer people have been filling the stands at the old ballgame since even before the pandemic. And last year's World Series viewership was only about a quarter of what it was in 1978.
No, when you look at the average number of fans who attend each game, football comes out way ahead. Here's the math: The NFL has 32 teams, each plays 16 games, so that's 256 games per season. The MLB has 30 teams, each plays 162 games, so that's 2,430 games per season.
Is the NFL popularity declining? All NFL games are averaging 15.7 million viewers to date, down from 16.5 million at the same point in 2021 (which also was the best start for the NFL since 2015).
Major League Baseball is struggling to fill the stands at pre-COVID levels as the sport heads into the last 2 1/2 months of its first season since 2019 without capacity restrictions. MLB reached the All-Star break with an average attendance of 26,409.
The underlying reason for MLB's plummeting attendance
First, let's break down MLB's attendance trends. Per Axios, 23 of 30 teams have seen drops in attendance this season. Teams such as the Athletics have seen an abysmal 54.6 percent drop.
Revenue in MLB has risen each season outside of 2020 and set a record $10.7 billion in 2019, according to Forbes. It is unclear how much revenue was made in 2021 as clubs keep their financial information hidden as much as possible, but if the Atlanta Braves are any indication, the league is back to normal after 2020.
Major League Baseball is the No. 15 fastest growing brand of 2022, per new report from @MorningConsult. MLB was the only sports league on the list.
How long has baseball been declining?
That sharp decline wasn't just a rarity either. Looking at the long-term attendance, the league has seen a drop in attendance for the past nine seasons dating back to the 2011-2012 season (2020 is excluded since there was no attendance due to COVID) leading to an overall 14% decline (Brown, 2022).
For past three years the NBA Finals have had higher ratings than the World Series, cementing the fact that more people are watching the NBA than MLB. So why are less people watching MLB than the NBA?
MLB attendance is on a long-term downward trend, including a 5% drop from 2019. The league has averaged 26,409 tickets sold per game in 2022.
Performance pressure is the number one reason why elite participants dropout (Butcher, Lindner & Johns, 2002). This is often linked with injuries that can result from overtraining due to pressure to perform and achieve from a young age. In fact, one in five elite athletes cites injuries as the main reason they quit.
Los Angeles Dodgers
Dodgers fans are some of the loudest and most passionate fans in baseball, which helps make attending a Dodgers game one of the most unforgettable experiences in all of sports.
Demand for MLB team hats on opening week 2021
It should come as no surprise that the New York Yankees, the biggest team in baseball, experienced by far the highest demand out of any team in our analysis. Perennially popular teams, the Red Sox, Dodgers, Cubs, and White Sox rounded out the top five.
| Overall Rank | City | MLB |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | New York, NY | 1 |
| 2 | St. Louis, MO | 2 |
| 3 | Los Angeles, CA | 4 |
| 4 | Atlanta, GA | 3 |
The world of professional and Olympic level sports has produced athletes that seem to be bigger, stronger and faster than those of 100 years ago. However, it has been argued that the athletes' bodies haven't changed much over this time frame and the enhanced performances are mostly the result of technological advances.
When looking specifically at data published by the Aspen Institute for kids ages 6-12 years-old, the number of kids playing baseball in 2019 was 14.4% and in 2020, 12.1%. These numbers show -15.2% difference. Youth athletes ranging from 13-17 years-old playing baseball also dropped between 2019 to 2020.
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What are America's top 3 sports?
| Sport | Favorite sport | Major professional league |
|---|---|---|
| American football | 37% | NFL |
| Basketball | 11% | NBA |
| Baseball | 9% | MLB |
| Association football (soccer) | 7% | MLS |
With 2.5 billion followers, cricket is the second-most popular sport (behind soccer/football with 3.5 billion followers).
Major League Baseball announced Tuesday that it was canceling Opening Day and the first two series of the 2022 season due to the ongoing lockout, with players and owners unable to come to a deal on a new labor agreement before the league-imposed deadline.
Even as baseball's popularity decreases, it remains popular, even with a shortened 2022 season. Fewer older fans are watching games on television, and they are not as willing to do so as younger fans. Baseball is already considered to be the least important of the major sports.
1. California
California produced 21.8 percent of the 1,091 players born in the United States who suited up for at least one big league game in 2021, including 34 players who tallied at least 2.0 WAR.
For past three years the NBA Finals have had higher ratings than the World Series, cementing the fact that more people are watching the NBA than MLB. So why are less people watching MLB than the NBA?
Because of this and other factors, a report from the Aspen Institute shows a trend of kids becoming more and more disinterested in organized sports whatsoever with a fall from 45% in 2008 to 38% in 2018 of children aged 6-12.