Baseball picks up, a better story to tell

Barry Bonds

'Maybe
the real reason baseball is up is that the public’s respect for the sport has grown over the past few years as baseball recovers from the strike.
The players are more accessible, teams are marketing themselves better and people have a little more respect for the Commissioner’s
office.'

Baseball picks up,
a better story to tell

Also, fans might finally be getting over '94 strike

By Gabriel Spitzer

    As the second half of Major League Baseball’s season commenced last night, Barry Bonds was on pace to hit 72 home runs and the Seattle Mariners were on pace to win 117 games.
    And Fox Sports just may be on pace to halt the ratings slide that has afflicted baseball for years.
    It’s no rebirth, but some compelling on-field stories, coupled with a variety of other factors, have carried baseball through a decent first half.
    To begin with, Tuesday night’s All-Star Game notched a 9 percent ratings increase over last year.
   The Midsummer Classic is one of the few ratings-grabbers outside of the October post-season, so its health is important to Fox in the first year of its exclusive contract to broadcast national baseball games.
    The game rated an 11.0 and 19 share, according to Nielsen’s national numbers, compared to the record low 10.1/18 NBC received a year ago.
    Fox estimates that 31.6 million people watched all or part of the game.
    Most important, Fox posted significant increases over last year’s game in baseball’s target demos. Men 18-34 were up 10 percent to a 6.8, men 18-49 were up 12 percent to a 7.6, and ratings for men 25-54 swelled by 25 percent, to an 8.4.
    Demo delivery has also been the silver lining for a seemingly dreary regular season. Through six telecasts, Fox’s Saturday games have been off 10 percent in households, from a 2.9/9 last season to a 2.6/9 this year.
    On the other hand, Fox’s rating for men 18-34 is actually up 6 percent this season, from a 1.6 to a 1.7. Men 18-49 and men 25-54 are flat, both at 1.7.
    Moreover, Fox Sports Net’s local and regional baseball telecasts are up an average of 8 percent. Fox Sports Net’s 16 branded networks plus the Madison Square Garden Network (of which FSN is a minority owner) collectively televise 24 of the 28 U.S.-based Major League Baseball teams.
   The modest improvement in baseball’s numbers, notable in a lousy economy when nearly all sports programming is on the decline, can probably be attributed to the confluence of many factors.
    "I think sports is kind of a fickle thing. We’re still coming off the strike in 1994, and maybe baseball is still kind of on the mend," says Hadrian Shaw, a sports analyst at Paul Kagan Associates.
    "Also, some of the bigger-market teams are having good years: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, Boston and Philadelphia. Last year you had teams like Oakland."
    After a 2000 season with little drama—no record chases and few marketable new stars—baseball can again point viewers toward some compelling stories.
    Barry Bonds is quietly challenging history as he continues on pace to shatter Mark McGwire’s record of 70 home runs.
    Also, several legendary players are expected to call it quits after this year. "Iron Man" Cal Ripken, hitting guru Tony Gwynn and McGwire himself have all hinted that this will be their last season.
   Those personalities, and the fading memories of the 1994 strike, could be letting baseball slowly emerge from its funk.
    "Maybe the real reason baseball is up is that the public’s respect for the sport has grown over the past few years as baseball recovers from the strike," says Neal Pilson, former president of CBS Sports and currently chairman of the sports consulting firm Pilson Communications.
    "The players are more accessible, teams are marketing themselves better and people have a little more respect for the Commissioner’s office. It’s probably all of those things."
    Building public confidence puts even more pressure on Major League Baseball to reach a speedy agreement with the players union, as the two sides prepare to negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement this off-season.
    "They need the support of the fans. They knew they would need to avoid a strike already, and now it’s even more crucial. There’s a lot of tension; you just kind of hope the two sides realize how fragile their game is," says Kagan’s Shaw.
    Unfortunately for Fox, baseball is showing signs of life at a time when there is little new ad money to be poured into sports. Buyers suspect that Fox has a ton of post-season ad time left to unload.
    "Fox has a significant amount of inventory left to sell. Now that NASCAR is over and the NFL marketplace has started out a little slow, I would assume baseball is front and center on Fox’s slate of urgent matters," says Dean Luplow, associate media director at Starcom.
    "From a price perspective, if you have some flexibility on your side, you can probably wait this out for a bit."

-Gabriel Spitzer is a staff writer for Media Life.

Printer-Friendly Version | Send to a Friend
Cover Page | Contact Us