How Popular Is Baseball, Really?

Major League Baseball and its fans have raised alarms in recent years over a perceived decline in the popularity of baseball in the United States. Falling attendance, poor World Series ratings and a lack of nationally recognized stars are often cited as evidence of the sport’s impending collapse.

However, if viewed through the lens of total tickets sold and local television ratings, a somewhat more optimistic picture emerges: one of strong, local fan bases — and a national following that could have a lot more room to grow.

It’s well documented that attendance at Major League Baseball games has been declining since 2012. About 68.5 million fans attended major league games during the 2019 regular season, down from a peak of nearly 80 million in 2007.

But M.L.B. cashes in on its sheer volume of games, vastly outperforming the N.F.L. and the N.B.A in ticket sales every year. M.L.B. teams play at least 2,430 regular-season games each season, compared with only 256 regular-season games for the N.F.L. and 1,230 for the N.B.A. Even the 160 M.L.B.-affiliated minor league teams sold nearly 50 million tickets in 2017.

A lot of people are going to a lot of baseball games.

Tom Brady vs. Mike Trout

A major concern for baseball is the meager national profiles of its stars. By nearly any measure, pro football and pro basketball players outpace baseball players in national popularity.

According to YouGov’s ratings of active sports personalities, 91 percent of Americans have heard of LeBron James and 88 percent have heard of Tom Brady, but only 43 percent have heard of Mike Trout of the Los Angeles Angels, baseball’s best player.

You don’t have to look any further than the national reach of each league’s television broadcasts to see why this may be the case.

An analysis by The New York Times of television broadcasts by county shows how widespread the broadcasts of the N.F.L. and N.B.A. stars are — and how minimal they are for baseball’s stars like Trout.

Few of Trout’s games are shown outside Southern California. For example, only six of his 162 games in 2018 were aired in Chicago. By contrast, 42 percent of LeBron James’s 82 games and 56 percent of Tom Brady’s 16 games were aired there.

Since even baseball’s best players rarely get airtime in markets outside their own, baseball struggles to promote its national stars on the same level as other sports do.

Over the past several seasons, baseball has tried to broaden the reach of its stars. But there may be no better solution than to find ways to let fans actually watch them play.

Baseball Is Local

Further evidence of the local nature of baseball’s fandom can be seen in Google searches. Teams like the Detroit Tigers and Colorado Rockies have very little following outside their areas and a few neighboring states compared with the N.F.L. teams from the same city. The Rockies, for instance, aren’t as popular across the country, but they get more searches in Colorado than the N.F.L.’s Broncos do.

The Pros and Cons of Local Broadcasting

Fox, ESPN, CBS and NBC own the national broadcasting rights for N.F.L. games, giving wide exposure to the league’s best teams and stars. Baseball’s broadcasting model is much different. Individual teams sell exclusive rights for nearly all of their games to either regional branches of these national networks or to local stations.

Although baseball’s national TV ratings lag far behind those of other top sports, these local broadcasts are very popular.

According to Nielsen ratings:

Again, baseball is relying on its high volume of games (one nearly every day for six months). But the fact remains that people spend many more hours watching their home team than other prime-time shows.

This works well for the regional networks — many of which are owned, at least in part, by the teams themselves.

The local popularity of baseball partially explains the poor World Series ratings in recent years. After following their home team for 162 games, fans may be unlikely to sit through a series between two teams they have rarely seen play and with 50 players whose names they may barely recognize. Instead, they’ll wait until next season, and tune back in to their local station.