Is baseball dying in America?

15 comments

1. Unfortunately it’s not nearly as popular as football or basketball, but it’s still doing fine

2. Nope.

   >MLB attendance per game in 2023 was 29,295, compared to 26,843 per game in 2022. That 9.1% increase in per-game attendance was the largest in 30 years,

3. Major League Baseball made 10 billion dollars last year.

   So, no.

4. It’s still in the top 4 sports, ahead of hockey even, and honestly, with the rule changes made by the MLB to speed up the games, I can see viewership rising again

5. MLB is the 2nd highest revenue generating sports league in the world [source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_professional_sports_leagues_by_revenue)

   MLB is also the most attended sports league in the world, drawing almost 3x the annual amount of 2nd place [source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_attendance_figures_at_domestic_professional_sports_leagues)

   If baseball is dying in America, then every sport is dying worldwide

6. Baseball’s doing just fine lol

7. They’ve been saying the sport has been dying since the 19th century

8. The variety of streaming subscriptions you need in order to follow baseball these days makes it hard to watch games, so yes, I think it’s slowly dying, or at least setting itself up for a demise in the not-too-distant future. It would be hard for any sport to keep its fan base, much less gain new fans, when it’s ridiculously complicated and expensive to follow it.

9. Relative fanbase is down compared to the 3 other big ones, especially football and basketball.

   Absolute numbers for attendance and revenue are still setting records.

   So…do with that what you will but I think they’ll be fine for a good while longer.

10. MLB has seen an uptick in attendance and TV viewership since they added rules designed to lower the game times, which has been largely successful.

    It’s basically 2nd or 3rd in the pecking order, fighting basketball; it’s order depends on who you talk to.

11. The new playoff format is terrible but otherwise i liked baseball better this year than previous years.

    The NFL also has a new playoff format that is worse than just a couple of years ago.

12. Baseball is more popular with certain ethnic groups, like Italians, East Asians and Latinos. I’m Overseas Chinese and I got brought up as a Mariners fan.

13. I visited home this summer and I took my kid to a couple of Dodger games.

    Holy *shit* does the pitch clock make a difference! That shit went by *lightning* fast, and it was exciting! They should have implemented that years ago.

14. Not in San Diego, that’s for sure. My office is nearby, and Petco Park got busy even during early weekday games this season.

15. The MLB is probably the third most popular league behind the NFL and College football. Maybe the NBA is slightly more popular, but it’s still pretty huge