Posted on 05/23/2017 11:34:41 AM PDT by Phlap
I almost hate to admit it, because he was such a putz. But you can make the argument that no commissioner in history ever corrected problems in his sport as well as Bud Selig did.
Between the wild card, CBA changes, and revenue sharing, MLB has probably never had a moment in its history where so many teams can reasonably expect to contend in a short period of time.
The Pirates are just mediocre and not God awful even after Andrew McCutcheon was stolen by aliens and replaced with some kind of strange duplicate AND their third baseman got arrested as some kind of international human trafficker AND their current best player got busted for being hopped up on goofballs.
It’s been a fun year for the Buccos......
Yes, that’s true. I think the internet age has changed a lot of this, too.
The next big challenge (already underway) for the sport is managing a cultural/generational transition where it turns from an "American" sport to a "foreign" one. Baseball talent here in the U.S. has declined a lot in recent decades, and you can already see signs that baseball is slowly being relegated to the same level of public attention as soccer. This is not a new thing, but you're starting to see the inevitable change that has come about as football and basketball eclipsed baseball as the preferred sports for American-born youngsters.
The league wasn’t really trying to make those teams move. Betman put in a lot of effort to keep Winnipeg, he was on the phone trying to get a stadium deal while they were packing. Hartford was playing in a mall, that needed to change, nobody’s fault but theirs that change involved a move. The teams that are struggling are the teams that stink, they can’t keep the fan engagement. Those teams are finishing under 500 most of the time, out of the playoff hunt by the All Star break. Edmonton and Calgary went through similar eras and had similar attendance problems. Nobody wants to pay money to watch their team get their asses kicked. The southward teams that put a quality team on the ice (San Jose, Kings, Nashville) make money.
The “big city” bounce for NHL playoffs is minimal. And without a national TV contract NOBODY outside of Chicago and Montreal watches, so there is no possible way that would get more viewers.
>I get the impression that half the people here stopped watching sports in 1997, and think Allen Iverson is still the biggest star in the league.
I stopped watching when it was clear the NBA was fine with their criminal element. I’ve never regretted it.
The current NHL model doesn't work well simply because they have 30 teams in the league but only about 8-9 good hockey markets. I define a "good hockey market" as a city where the team could probably fill 90% of the seats in their arena in the last week of the season even if they're out of playoff contention. These markets would be the Original Six teams, plus Edmonton, Philadelphia and maybe Buffalo. Winning doesn't guarantee a fan base at all -- as evidenced by the difficulties faced by the New Jersey Devils in the late 1990s and early 2000s even as they were one of the most successful franchises in all of North American sports on the ice. I can pretty much guarantee you that Nashville will go down the same road once the novelty of their success fades. Heck -- the team was a candidate for acquisition and a potential relocation to Hamilton or Kansas City as recently as ten years ago, and it was only awarded an expansion franchise in the first place in the late 1990s because it was the only city among the contenders (Columbus, the Twin Cities and Atlanta were the others) that had a new arena in place to accommodate the team.
I suspect hockey fans lose interest in their teams not because they lose, but because their favorite team loses its top talent to other teams. This is what happened to Edmonton in the early 1990s after every one of the stars from their dynasty of the previous decade was traded or signed away.
I think I read somewhere that the 2013 Stanley Cup finals between Chicago and Boston generated larger TV audiences in North America than the NBA finals that year, but the numbers don't show up in the ratings because Canadian networks aren't included in the U.S. TV ratings.
I think the NHL Board of Governors had been pushing to have those teams move for years. The four franchises that came into the NHL as part of the 1979 merger agreement with the WHA were never really a top priority of the NHL. The immediate success of the Edmonton Oilers (through their sort-of-underhanded methods) probably caught the NHL leadership completely off guard.
What is the current NBA’s criminal element? Family Man Lebron? Family Man Steph? Guy Who Cries in Public About His Mom KD?
The closest thing the NBA currently has to an Iverson is probably JR Smith, and he’s more of a likable drunk than an ominous thug. (The guy said that his career improved in Cleveland because there are less places to have fun than in New York. He also does not appear to own any shirts).
No. Less points for close field goals would cause coaches to go for the TD perhaps and in any case there would be fewer tie games at the end of regulation.
The average age of the baseball tv viewer is 93 years old. That’s a problem.
At the same time, live attendance is still solid across the league.
Sports popularity is cyclical. And out of all the sports, the one sitting on the biggest time bomb is the NFL. I live in Katy freaking Texas - home of arguably the best high school program in the country. And even here, you are starting to hear more and more mothers say, “My son is never playing football.”
Football is in real danger of becoming boxing in the next 30 years - a sport where only the most desperate athletes end up. And those most desperate athletes may not have the option because the poor schools where they tend to exist won’t be able to pay the insurance premiums.
Baseball isn’t going to face anything like the labor shortage that football could have.
I think baseball could largely be fixed if there was a movement to get its American players to loosen up. The World Baseball Classic was a massive success, because people loved the emotion and fun taking place on the field.
But once the real season started, you end up with guys throwing baseballs into hitter’s ears for daring to celebrate a home run.
Fix that and speed up the game, and baseball will start to get young fans again, I think.
Except Edmonton had recently had a good chunk of the stadium closed because they’d been so bad for so long attendance was in the toilet. Doesn’t really matter how “traditional” a market is, eventually a team can use up that good will. Look at the Yankees, quality has been down for a while, attendance is dropping, they got a bump from Rivera’s farewell tour. They’re season off well, maybe they’ll right the ship. But goodwill ALWAYS fades with a bad product. Just look at the Jags, there’s hardly a more “traditional” football market than Florida and they’ve had a bunch of the stadium closed for over a decade. Bad team, bad attendance.
Nashville’s been sustaining success on and off the ice. If they keep it up they’ll build the loyalty. Just like any other team. San Jose has some of the most consistent attendance in the league, because they’ve been one of the most consistent teams. They’re over 500 pretty much all the time, they make the playoffs most years, they make the second round much of the time. They haven’t won a Cup yet, but if you’re a hockey fan in the San Jose area you know there’s at least one good team on the ice every home game. So attendance is good.
Always the weird part with that chunk of NHL history. Many different forces. In the end though those teams moved on ownership decisions. And now Winnipeg is back, but no good. I know they inherited a bad team from Atlanta, but they need to get it together.
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