OT: Baseball attendance is down again

[RUschool]

https://sports.yahoo.com/mlb-attend...ing-teams-are-getting-hit-hard-014951998.html

See some of the pictures of empty stadiums. People want to see winning teams.

 

[montoya33]

not so fast

 

[superfan01]

The baseball product is horrendous now.
20 plus strikeout games with 8 hits sprinkled in from both teams is not exciting to get people to travel to the ball park and spend all that money.

 

[Proud NJ Sports Fan]

I'm boycotting Yankee Stadium since they stopped playing Kate Smith's God Bless America

 

[pawildcat_rivals209725]

Too many walks and strikeouts combined with slow play. Pitching has the edge now, and when one kid throwing 98 mph heat throws out his arm and heads for the Tommy John surgery they just bring along another. It just breaks down to the fact that baseball is not an exciting game when batters are not hitting the ball.

 

[Abro1975]

Lol. Same thread every Spring.

 

[RU#1fan]

I'm boycotting Yankee Stadium since they stopped playing Kate Smith's God Bless America

Good luck with that.
I’ll be there tomorrow night.

 

[Salvi's Headband]

I'm boycotting Yankee Stadium since they stopped playing Kate Smith's God Bless America

Wow you really stan for an absolutely atrocious showtune. They should play Take Me Out to the Ballgame and that's it.

 

[rudad02]

Game stinks. Boring!

 

[Mr_Twister]

Proposed ban on peanuts is the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

 

[Proud NJ Sports Fan]

Wow you really stan for an absolutely atrocious showtune. They should play Take Me Out to the Ballgame and that's it.

That's another great song

 

[DHajekRC84]

Wow you really stan for an absolutely atrocious showtune. They should play Take Me Out to the Ballgame and that's it.

I'm offended by the use of "Cracker" in that song. It should also be banned. opcorn:

 

[cubuffsdoug_rivals]

I'm offended by the use of "Cracker" in that song. It should also be banned. opcorn:

Now that's funny.[roll][roll]

 

[GoodOl'Rutgers]

move the pitchers rubber and mound back another 10 feet... that will counter the speedy fastballs.. then the complaint will be that games take too long when teams bat around in an inning regularly

 

[Abro1975]

I still watch most Yankee games on TV . Go to a few a year, but not as many as when I was single. Trick for me is to find a good seat for a reasonable price on Stubhub the night before a game.

My son and his frat friends go to Mets and Phils games. His GF father is a Braves fan, and he goes with him when the Braves play the Mets.

I look at standings and stats almost every day. Big, great TVs for cheap prices have just redistributed the teams revenues a little from in stadium ticket sales to revenues from Cable TV contracts.

I still go to a few HS games a month, and then more when the playoffs start. Also get to a few RU college baseball games, as well as RU softball.

Batter Up !

 

[Proud NJ Sports Fan]

I still watch most Yankee games on TV . Go to a few a year, but not as many as when I was single. Trick for me is to find a good seat for a reasonable price on Stubhub the night before a game.

My son and his frat friends go to Mets and Phils games. His GF father is a Braves fan, and he goes with him when the Braves play the Mets.

I look at standings and stats almost every day. Big, great TVs for cheap prices have just redistributed the teams revenues a little from in stadium ticket sales to revenues from Cable TV contracts.

I still go to a few HS games a month, and then more when the playoffs start. Also get to a few RU college baseball games, as well as RU softball.

Batter Up !

I love going to the park to see Yankees games at The Stadium, especially day games.

But I'll save a lot of money just staying home or going to the local bar to watch the games instead.

My boycott will last at long as they continue to be weak kneed to SJWs

 

[Proud NJ Sports Fan]

I watched Mets-Reds highlights this morning and Flushing Field was totally empty.

 

[ashokan]

I'm boycotting Yankee Stadium since they stopped playing Kate Smith's God Bless America

Extremist lol

 

[ashokan]

move the pitchers rubber and mound back another 10 feet... that will counter the speedy fastballs.. then the complaint will be that games take too long when teams bat around in an inning regularly

Big 12 baseball lol

I cant watch baseball until Sept/Oct. Then I like the tight pitching duels where I have to follow the pitch count.

I went to a live Yankee game a few years ago and was surprised it was more boring than radio. I kept looking around at anything but the hitter. Baseball is perfect for radio. Too bad I cant take Sterling and Waldman and all the micro ads

 

[RUich]

The same thing will soon be true for football. The money they pay players in all of these sports is just insane and the cost of going to a game is well beyond many families trying to make ends meet.
My wife and I watch pro tennis on the tennis channel and she recently said to me that she really understands how nice it is to be in the comfort of her own home with the bathroom within reach.
As much as I enjoyed going to Yankee Stadium as a kid, no real desire to spend the better part of the day there anymore.

 

[WhiteBus]

Extremist lol

I was never a fan of her version. It was a Flyers thing not a Yankee thing. Besides the 7th inning stretch isn't about Kate Smith. It about thanking veterans. Stupid to boycott over Kate Smith's rendition.

 

[ashokan]

I was never a fan of her version. It was a Flyers thing not a Yankee thing. Besides the 7th inning stretch isn't about Kate Smith. It about thanking veterans. Stupid to boycott over Kate Smith's rendition.

I don't even care for Kate Smith. Its this whole American ISIS thing where Marxist oriented, radical elements rampage against everything while pretending to be "virtuous". They would guillotine people if they could

 

[buffalochicken21]

I'm boycotting Yankee Stadium since they stopped playing Kate Smith's God Bless America

I don't even care for Kate Smith. Its this whole American ISIS thing where Marxist oriented, radical elements rampage against everything while pretending to be "virtuous". They would guillotine people if they could

The bats and curmudgeons got out of their CE Fox News cave again, someone call animal control and send em' back.

That article is mostly showing empty day games. Something tells me it's still a bit cold in Kansas City and Chicago, and it's still the school year. Baseball is not exactly attracting young people, but you can't expect a ton of people to show up for day games in the middle of the school year, in the middle of a work day, in crappy, cold, rainy weather.

The only people available to even show up at these games are the elderly who aren't confined to a retirement home right now.

 

[Abro1975]

Cold, mid week games in April and May usually have lower attendance than when the weather warms up in the summer, and when kids are out of school.
Funny how that works.

When you Pro boycott sports for political reasons, like Kate Smith and Colin Kapernick, college sports because of liberal stances on campuses , amateur sports because of participation trophies and title IX outrage, then your favorite pastime might actually be political outrage and not sports.

 

[Scarletnut]

I played organized baseball until I was 26, faced Jim Bouton and his knuckleball when his MLB career was over. Diehard Mets fan since Seaver's rookie year. I can't watch a complete game anymore. SO, HR and BB comprise almost 50% of the offense. No hit and runs, sacrifice bunts, hitting to the opposite field against a shift. Sorry, sounds old school but the game is boring to me now.

 

[RUschool]

When I leave the supermarket, I hear a bunch of old men, 70’s and 80’s collecting the shopping carts, talk about baseball but when they die so will the game.

Sports in general are losing their appeal. I plan on watching some of the NBA playoffs but then don’t for some reason but hope to watch the finals. Maybe will be interested when the knicks get competitive.

 

[Salvi's Headband]

I love going to the park to see Yankees games at The Stadium, especially day games.

But I'll save a lot of money just staying home or going to the local bar to watch the games instead.

My boycott will last at long as they continue to be weak kneed to SJWs

Not buying Yankee tickets to own the libs.

 

[RUschool]

Kate Smith explains the decline in the baseball stadiums around the country. Idiots.

 

[Abro1975]

"Nobody’s Going to Sports in Person Anymore. And No One Seems to Care."

"But the main reason attendance is down, in Major League Baseball as well as most of the other major professional sports, and the main reason owners and commissioners aren’t sweating it too much, I’d argue, is because it can be. Teams don’t really care anymore about bringing fans to the stadium — at least not as much as they used to —because they no longer need people in the seats to make money.

Last year, the NFL brought in revenues of more than $17 billion, and Major League Baseball earned more than $10 billion, records for both sports. An increasingly small percentage of all that revenue came from attendance. The NFL attributes most of its 2017 improvement to a new Thursday Night Football television package and increased media payments from other properties. MLB’s numbers, which grew even more the year before (when its Advanced Media arm spun off into its own company and was sold for $2.58 billion to Disney), came from expanded partnerships, local television ratings, and its own media-rights deals. Attendance has been down each of last seven years in MLB, and MLB’s revenue has been up every single season. Knowing that, how much would you sweat attendance numbers?"

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018...ports-in-person-and-no-one-seems-to-care.html

 

[Wolv RU]

"Nobody’s Going to Sports in Person Anymore. And No One Seems to Care."

"But the main reason attendance is down, in Major League Baseball as well as most of the other major professional sports, and the main reason owners and commissioners aren’t sweating it too much, I’d argue, is because it can be. Teams don’t really care anymore about bringing fans to the stadium — at least not as much as they used to —because they no longer need people in the seats to make money.

Last year, the NFL brought in revenues of more than $17 billion, and Major League Baseball earned more than $10 billion, records for both sports. An increasingly small percentage of all that revenue came from attendance. The NFL attributes most of its 2017 improvement to a new Thursday Night Football television package and increased media payments from other properties. MLB’s numbers, which grew even more the year before (when its Advanced Media arm spun off into its own company and was sold for $2.58 billion to Disney), came from expanded partnerships, local television ratings, and its own media-rights deals. Attendance has been down each of last seven years in MLB, and MLB’s revenue has been up every single season. Knowing that, how much would you sweat attendance numbers?"

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018...ports-in-person-and-no-one-seems-to-care.html

The question is whether it is a leading indicator for the future. That is, does it mean that fewer people will be as connected to these sports in 20 years such that they have fewer viewers/followers.

Of chief relevance to this board, college football has also had declining attendance over the past decade. While revenues are up, I do think this is a significant warning sign for the future of the sport.

 

[G- RUnit]

It's all about TV, attendance now secondary. Just different.

 

[AreYouNUTS]

I was never a fan of her version. It was a Flyers thing not a Yankee thing. Besides the 7th inning stretch isn't about Kate Smith. It about thanking veterans. Stupid to boycott over Kate Smith's rendition.

Actually it started (at Yankee Stadium) in honor of the victims of 9/11 as well as those who participated in the rescue efforts.

 

[RUschool]

The question is whether it is a leading indicator for the future. That is, does it mean that fewer people will be as connected to these sports in 20 years such that they have fewer viewers/followers.

Of chief relevance to this board, college football has also had declining attendance over the past decade. While revenues are up, I do think this is a significant warning sign for the future of the sport.

I lost interest in sports and believe a lot of people lost it too.

 

[Wolv RU]

I lost interest in sports and believe a lot of people lost it too.

I'm sure this has been happening forever too. The difference has been that those that lost interest were replaced by new fans, and that may not be the case now.

 

[Ronnie_B]

Maybe start the season more towards spring than winter. I never go to games until after Memorial Day but I'm also pretty extreme with the heat, the perfect conditions for me is a night game during a heat wave.

You could have offered me a $100 and box seats to last Friday nights Mets game and I would have been thanks but no thanks and I bet a majority of fans are like me.

But the only way to stop starting the season in March and not have the World Series extend to November is shorten the regular season, it really is unnecessary to play 162 games, go back to 154 game schedule and also do what the NFL does in having their cold weather teams play more home games than usual in September and October but vice versa with baseball in that their warm weather teams play more games early and cold weather teams are on the road. Not ALL games, just more, example is warm weather and dome teams play 75% of the games in March and April and teams in NY Chicago the opposite in playing 75% on the road.

The bottom line is baseball fans expect to being able to go to a ballpark not having to wear a wool winter hat.

 

[babbs09]

Me and a few buds split the MLB.tv package each year. 18 bucks a guy and access to basically all games for all teams for the whole year. Can watch on multiple devices. Really reduces the need to go see games.

 

[SouthJerseyRU]

Too many walks and strikeouts combined with slow play. Pitching has the edge now, and when one kid throwing 98 mph heat throws out his arm and heads for the Tommy John surgery they just bring along another. It just breaks down to the fact that baseball is not an exciting game when batters are not hitting the ball.

I don't mind today's game, but as you stated it has changed drastically. Found this interesting tidbit in Jayson Stark's column on the Athletic today:

The whole sport has turned into Nolan Ryan
Once upon a time, there was a pitcher named Nolan Ryan. We think of him as the greatest strikeout machine who ever lived. That’ll happen when a guy strikes out 5,714 innocent hitters who make the mistake of stepping in to “hit” against him.

But I noticed something about Ryan the other day that blew my mind. His rate of strikeouts per nine innings wasn’t 12 or 13 or 15. It was “only” 9.55.

I bring that up because, on the day I came upon that number, I noticed something else: For the first time ever, the entire sport of baseball has a strikeout rate of 9.0 per nine innings. And that’s a mind-boggling revelation about baseball in 2019. Your average pitcher now piles up a strikeout an inning. Or pretty close to what Nolan Ryan once did.

Now obviously, in Ryan’s era, all other pitchers averaged 5.46 strikeouts per nine innings, according to Lee Sinins’ Complete Baseball Encyclopedia. So it was a very different time. But that’s the point! Just since 2008, the strikeout rate has jumped from 6.8 per nine innings to nearly 9.0. And here’s the impact of that:

2008: 32,884 strikeouts2019: 43,084 strikeouts*

 

[WhiteBus]

Actually it started (at Yankee Stadium) in honor of the victims of 9/11 as well as those who participated in the rescue efforts.

Yes. Yankees started the tradition of an extended 7th inning stretch the very first game after 9/11. God Bless America was song often by opera singer Ronan Tynan, who was canned by the Yankees for an anti-Semitic remark. There was also a time in between where it wasn't for 9/11 or veterans but just to honor America.

 

[RUhasarrived]

Gambling may be able to save sports.

Government is the only entity guaranteed to continue Ad infinitum.

 

[Proud NJ Sports Fan]

It's too fickin expensive with the tolls, parking, train, uber, $12 beers , etc

Im happy with a 12 pack of Bud at home watching on tv

Especially when the owners don't show a backbone