beckdawg
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Something i was thinking about for awhile now is that it's really hard to watch baseball these days if you have no intention of going out and buying MLB.tv or whatever cable package you may have access to. This got me to thinking about the most popular brand right now which is the NFL. And sure you can't watch EVERY game without sunday ticket but every week you get several games you can watch with just basic channels and I have to believe that ease of access matters. Not to mention the fact that I can't tell you how many times even with ESPN that I've been blacked out of nationally televised cubs games.
Now from the team perspective I get it. Especially if you are a team like LA NY or chicago you get paid by doing regional tv deals. So I can certainly see why those teams would be against giving them up. But as much as anything I think what caused this imbalance in parity in baseball was these large scale tv contracts. For example, the YES network has only been around since 2002. NESN has been around longer(1984) but it's not like the red sox were really dominating money until that same 2002ish period.
Ultimately stadium capacity is always going to be a some what similar range among teams. And sure merchandising will always be more lucrative in bigger cities but that's not where teams get their bread buttered. It's these massive TV deals that some teams have found themselves with that separate an $80 mil team from a $190 mil team.
And even if you ignore that aspect, I feel like the reason NFL is so popular is how easy it is to watch. I'm old enough to remember when baseball regularly showed up on easy to access tv. if it wasn't the braves/cubs on tbs/wgn you generally could find baseball on local stations more than once a week.
I guess I just feel like they are severely limiting their exposure to wring every last dollar they can out of their fan base so much so that they are actively having to push youth programs to get kids interested in baseball.
Now from the team perspective I get it. Especially if you are a team like LA NY or chicago you get paid by doing regional tv deals. So I can certainly see why those teams would be against giving them up. But as much as anything I think what caused this imbalance in parity in baseball was these large scale tv contracts. For example, the YES network has only been around since 2002. NESN has been around longer(1984) but it's not like the red sox were really dominating money until that same 2002ish period.
Ultimately stadium capacity is always going to be a some what similar range among teams. And sure merchandising will always be more lucrative in bigger cities but that's not where teams get their bread buttered. It's these massive TV deals that some teams have found themselves with that separate an $80 mil team from a $190 mil team.
And even if you ignore that aspect, I feel like the reason NFL is so popular is how easy it is to watch. I'm old enough to remember when baseball regularly showed up on easy to access tv. if it wasn't the braves/cubs on tbs/wgn you generally could find baseball on local stations more than once a week.
I guess I just feel like they are severely limiting their exposure to wring every last dollar they can out of their fan base so much so that they are actively having to push youth programs to get kids interested in baseball.
