LockoutSeason wrote:DavidSterned wrote:Old_Blue wrote:
And MLB's "business model" (if you can even call it that) is focused on old men whose disposable income mostly goes towards Depends undergarments and erectile dysfunction meds. And, of course you don't have to worry about MLB fans growing out of the sport - since most of them are currently trying to decide between burial or cremation.Seriously, it's been 27 years since MLB added an expansion team. All four MLB expansion teams added since 1993 reside in the bottom third of MLB team valuations. You've got another dozen or so moribund franchises who routinely enter a season with little to no hope of reaching the playoffs. And, it's not simply because these teams suck. It's because MLB has neither a salary cap or floor, such that the highest payroll in MLB in 2024-2025 was $323 million and the lowest payroll was $63.5 million. The whole thing is a fiasco.
And yet the MLB still carries far better TV ratings and its teams are wildly more popular in their respective markets. Seriously, outside of maybe Miami, can you name me a single market where the NBA team is more popular than the MLB team? Even Los Angeles is more of a Dodgers town at the moment. The product in the NBA is secondary to the fluff highlights and male soap opera style ESPN coverage- something most of us age out of by the team we're in our late 20s and have actually developed our prefrontal cortexes.
Also, the MLB is much closer to expanding again than the NBA is. It's all but confirmed that it will before 2030. Aside from Nosferatu's delusional ramblings about a European league whenever he's been out of his coffin for too long, there's zero evidence that the NBA is even within a decade of seeing any sort of expansion. It's struggling to sustain itself in markets like Memphis and New Orleans as it is. But hey at least scoring and triple doubles are up.
MLB does not have better ratings than the NBA with the exception for the World Series. NBA has better regular season and pre-championship playoff ratings, not to mention crushing every league on social media.
And even then MLB is completely reliant getting big market teams in the World Series, even moreso than the Finals. Did you see the ratings for the Texas vs. Arizona World Series? Oof.
Baseball never successfully expanded to the West Coast or the South. Outside of LA and San Francisco, every West Coast team has failed to launch. Still irrelevant south of the Mason-Dixon Line. The sport has been stagnant for 40 years.
Hmm... seems like the Mariners did pretty well this year in Seattle. How's the NBA doing there again?
And the MLB playoffs this year averaged 200,000 more viewers than the NBA playoffs. It's not just the World Series at this point.
