MLB teams are relying on an unending stream of TV revenues to finance these deals.
That scenario is about to meet the hard, cold reality of cord-cutting.
Yeah, I don’t see baseball surviving as it had before. NFL, NHL, NBA all have quite strong ticket sales and fan interest, but MLB seems to be waning quickly. You can see it in high school sports as well - parents are more willing to put their kids in soccer for spring sports than baseball.
Guys I play with will mention a prior night's Tiger's game and if I saw such and such play. Nope and I never even heard of the guy......
Parking, ticket prices and rising costs of refreshments are getting way out of line. I don't know a family can afford to take their kids to a game anymore.
Jimmy Johns and some local businessmen built a real nice little stadium near me here in S.E. Michigan where they are hosting a small four team league called the United Shore Professional Baseball league. They hope to expand the number of teams.
The team names are Birmingham Bloomfield Beavers, Eastside Diamond Hoppers, Utica Unicorns and the Westside Wooly Mammoths.....LOL!
The players are basically local and ex-college players. The intent of the stadium and league is to provide a fun baseball venue for families and their kids and hopefully give the players exposure to major league scouts. There have been several that have already been signed to major league farm teams.....
It does not appear baseball or any other sport will ever run out of money. They have been predicting doomsday for decades and it never happens.
MLB is available on a wide variety of platforms. MLB does not depend on being part of broad cable packages. It’s already mostly available a la carte.