Bring back day baseball for the World Series
Good news for baseball over football this week. The ratings came out for the 2013 Pro Bowl and only 9.9 million people watched that game.
That means that Game Three of the 2012 World Series outdrew the Pro Bowl, after failing to outdraw the football All- Star game the past few years.
Why does baseball do so bad in the ratings game compared to football?
If you asked many baseball fans, that are middle aged and up males, most would say, “The games end too late, so why bother watching only the beginning.”
Football knows the optimum time to end a game is 10:00 in EST. Baseball has not had a game end at that time, since they played day games back in the 1970′s.
The first night game in the World Series was the brainchild of Charley Finley, Oakland A’s owner, it was not until the fourth game of the 1971 World Series that baseball ever played a game under the lights.
Some may remember, like I do, bringing a transistor radio and an earplug to school and listening to the World Series.
In fifth grade I can recall the seventh game in 1960, passing notes to others telling them the score. School was out when it was 9-9, and I can recall the spot on Commonwealth Ave., in New Britain, CT where I stood when Bill Mazeroski led of the last of the ninth with a home run.
Baseball has not played a day game since starting Game Six in 1987 at 4:04 ET.
Why not bring back day baseball for the fall classic? Everyone will be awake at the end of the game, if the first pitch is at four in the afternoon.
Last year 111 million people watch the Super Bowl, and the World Series averaged 12.7 million for four games.
Nobody watches baseball because the games all end after 11pm in the Eastern Time zone.
Games that used to average two and one half hours 30 and 40 years ago, now all last past three hours all the time.
Football has never started a Super Bowl past 6:30 and they know the game needs to end by 10pm to get maximum exposure.
Baseball continues to keep their head in the sand, and refuses to see how those numbers would improve if they went back to the days of transistor radios, and day baseball for all the World Series games.
Do you think more people would watch the World Series if the games all ended before 10:00?
World Series ratings no longer matter. It is all about regionalized television deals. Super Bowl ratings are high due to knowing exactly when the game is going be played in a controlled environment. The Super Bowl is about all the extraneous nonsense (commercials, half-time, coin-flip, eating high sodium food). I will boycott the Super Bowl like usual.
I agree with you Rick. World Series ratings would definitely be better if the games ended at a reasonable time. 6pmET for first pitch is good enough. That would have most games end by 10pm. There is no reason why the World Series couldn’t garner the same attention as the Super Bowl. Baseball just goes about it the wrong way.
My childhood also involved listening to games on the radio…. Mets games in the 80′s. We would ride our BMX bikes in circles around the radio so we could stay in earshot….
As for watching the WS, i may be in the minority, but the whole steroid issue has caused me to lose intrest in watching MLB games. I’m not sure if its the scumbag attitude of the players who did it or what, but i haven’t watched a WS game in years.
Riding around the radio on Sunday afternoons was awesome. Problem was, the Mets infamously always lost on Sundays. Knowing what we know now, it’s no surprise that those teams couldn’t play on Sunday afternoon.
If you can’t watch MLB because of the steroid issue, how could you watch any other sport. We’ve learned that they are all loaded with players taking PEDs. Baseball gets a bum rap on steroids, but it’s because they are actually catching the cheaters. Same with cycling. It’s also because people actually CARE about baseball. People care about the integrity of the Hall of Fame, and care about the sport. Same with cycling in Europe. Nobody actually CARES about football (or hockey, or basketball), and they aren’t seriously going after the cheaters, so we all just ignore the blatantly obvious signs of steroids and sweep the stories (like the Carolina Panthers entire team on shit) under the rug. Do any search of “nba steroids” or “nhl steroids”, etc, and you will find plenty of stories from players who are trying to tell everyone that there are problems in their leagues. But it’s only baseball that people love enough to do something about it.