Gammons on parity

[Fan4Life]

Who cares if the NFL system is "flawed." It's fun and you know your team has a chance to go to the playoffs if you stay healthy and can do a handful of things well.

The MLB may have the best system, but no one cares. Each season is appears that the ratings for the MLB playoffs are down. Interest is down as well too. Football is king. It has totally maxed out in pretty much every market they have so that they are now looking to Europe, Mexico and CHina to expand. So much for a flawed system.

I can't think this was aimed at me... if it is.. either you didn't understand my comment well, or I am misunderstanding yours.. because the statement in bold above seems to be in direct conflict with eachother... IF for example.. a cry baby like Ely Manning (ala John Elway) wasn't able to manipulate the system, he wouldn't be playing in NY right now and thus a smaller market team would have gotten better and brought more parity.. same thing happens in baseball.. if all the great minor league prospects only want to sign with contenders, they can.

[rolliefingers]

I agree with a lot of this, but I still think there's a big problem with this argument:

There's nothing a small market team can do if the big market teams they compete with are smart. The Yanks are starting to get their farm system spun back up. If they can spend $200M on payroll and spit out a Cano or a Wang every couple years the Rays might as well just field a $10M team and mail it in. The O's face a huge problem when they're constantly facing two teams, the Yanks and the BoSox, who are not only the richest teams but they're pretty darn smart, too.

How exactly do you get consistently smarter than a team that has 15 all stars and a productive farm system?

For the Orioles, competing directly with NY and Boston (and Toronto), they're essentially in a situation where everyone is already smart, and they're rich.

If you fix the way baseball divides up and spends its revenues you can have a situation where TB can exist, and where KC and Pittsburgh don't need to have a miraculous confluence of events to get them to the playoffs.

This is true, but the more the MFYs spend, the more gets redistributed as well.

No doubt there are still competitive balance issues. I think MLB has done a huge disservice by not socializing the local TV rights - it not only hurts the small market teams in terms of shared revenue; it hurts baseball for fans not to be able to see any game they want. I would love to see the eruption of Mount Steinbrenner if sharing local TV revenue were ever seriously pursued.

I also agree that TB and the O's are screwed more than most teams, due to MFYs and BOS dominating our division.

I just don't want to see a salary cap. I think it makes the NFL unbelievably bland and corporate - talk about rooting for laundry!

[Fan4Life]

This is true, but the more the MFYs spend, the more gets redistributed as well.

No doubt there are still competitive balance issues. I think MLB has done a huge disservice by not socializing the local TV rights - it not only hurts the small market teams in terms of shared revenue; it hurts baseball for fans not to be able to see any game they want. I would love to see the eruption of Mount Steinbrenner if sharing local TV revenue were ever seriously pursued.

I also agree that TB and the O's are screwed more than most teams, due to MFYs and BOS dominating our division.

I just don't want to see a salary cap. I think it makes the NFL unbelievably bland and corporate - talk about rooting for laundry!

The best way to solve the problem is to put the teams in divisions based on market size, but obviously that isn't possible, so, another idea could be to revenue share inside the divisions instead on MLB as a whole.. so, for example, if the NYY and NYM over spend and pay taxes into a fund, that fund would only get redistributed amongst the teams in their division, instead of MLB as a whole.. that would allow all the AL East teams more equal footing with NY and thus NY would spend less, or at least consider it. If other divisons don't have teams over spending, then there shouldn't be a competitive disadvantage in that division. You'd probably have to restructure how the caps get tallied as well as requiring all money collected to be reinvested into team payroll or forfeited. Something like that...

[rolliefingers]

The best way to solve the problem is to put the teams in divisions based on market size, but obviously that isn't possible, so, another idea could be to revenue share inside the divisions instead on MLB as a whole.. so, for example, if the NYY and NYM over spend and pay taxes into a fund, that fund would only get redistributed amongst the teams in their division, instead of MLB as a whole.. that would allow all the AL East teams more equal footing with NY and thus NY would spend less, or at least consider it. If other divisons don't have teams over spending, then there shouldn't be a competitive disadvantage in that division. You'd probably have to restructure how the caps get tallied as well as requiring all money collected to be reinvested into team payroll or forfeited. Something like that...

Sounds like a decent idea...

[Fan4Life]

Sounds like a decent idea...

I think it's something to build from...

[oriole_way]

So? Why is this a bad thing?

Nobody is arguing there isn't an advantage. The point is it is an advantage that can be overcome and, honestly, it can be overcome pretty easily. It just requires competence.

The NFL salary cap just allows crappy management to not have to work that hard and still have people come to their games.

The Marlins certainly groomed Beckett, Willis, Cabrera et al. The Tigers groomed most of their players.

For every example you throw out about someone "buying a championship," there is an example of a well run organization succeeding through their farm system and shrewd maneuvering.

That's what makes baseball interesting. Different teams use different styles, philosophies and advantages to improve themselves. Some have it easier, some don't. The bottomline is that several playoff spots are up for grabs until well late in the season. The Yankees, Red Sox, BlueJays, Twins, Tigers, WhiteSox, Angels, A's, Mets, Phillies, Marlins, Cardinals, Astros, Reds, Padres, Giants, Dodgers all had a realistic shot at making the playoffs come August. That's over half the teams.

No, the point is that everyone organization that succeeds in the NFL has to be well run. Otherwise, you end up being the Arizona Cardinals or Detroit Lions. Every team in the NFL that has any sustained success is well run, whether it's Eagles, Steelers, Patriots, Broncos, Colts etc.

In MLB, only the small or mid market teams have to be well run to succeed.

The A's, Twins, etc are well run. The Yankees just can outspend everyone else.

In the NFL, you can't buy a championship, much less a playoff appearance. If the NFL were set up like MLB, the Redskins and Cowboys would be like the Yankees, while the Steelers and Colts would be like the Pirates and Royals.

[Fan4Life]

No, the point is that everyone organization that succeeds in the NFL has to be well run. Otherwise, you end up being the Arizona Cardinals or Detroit Lions. Every team in the NFL that has any sustained success is well run, whether it's Eagles, Steelers, Patriots, Broncos, Colts etc.

In MLB, only the small or mid market teams have to be well run to succeed.

The A's, Twins, etc are well run. The Yankees just can outspend everyone else.

In the NFL, you can't buy a championship, much less a playoff appearance. If the NFL were set up like MLB, the Redskins and Cowboys would be like the Yankees, while the Steelers and Colts would be like the Pirates and Royals.

Quite true, but, I think the NFL needs to address the draft issue I pointed out earlier.

[oriole_way]

Baseball just broke its overall attendance record for the 3rd year in a row, so it is hardly hurting. I would prefer an NFL-like system, though.

You forgot to mention that baseball used to be the national past time but not anymore (by a long shot). You forgot to mention how a regular season NFL game will be watched by more viewers than any regular season baseball game and will often outdraw most MLB playoff games.

Check the ratings for the Oakland Raiders - Denver Broncos game vs the Mets - Cardinals game yesterday (when they are released). I wouldn't be surprised if the NFL game had higher tv ratings. What does that say?

MLB playoff games can't even win their time slot much less outdraw the NFL.

Game 1 of the Yankees - Tigers playoff series on FOX finished 4th that night behind ABC (Dancing with the stars), CBS (NCIS and The Unit) and NBC (Friday Night Lights and Law and Order:Criminal Intent). That Yankee - Tiger game drew 8.36 million viewers. Meanwhile, Sunday Night Football drew 15.14 million viewers that week. For comparison, 13 NFL games outdrew primetime's 5 most watched season finales last year.

http://www.zap2it.com/tv/ratings/zap-ratings100306,0,7959674.story

http://www.calendarlive.com/tv/ratings/cl-et-tvratingstext11oct11,0,5868611.htmlstory?coll=cl-tvratings

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/s_456970.html

Let's talk about how many viewers tune in to the Super Bowl (90.7 million last year) vs a World Series game, or about how much advertisers pay to show their ads during these 2 events.

Advertisers paid approx 2.5 million for a 30 second spot during the Super Bowl last year.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/01/26/superbowl/main1241339.shtml

The Super Bowl, even though it's a single game, often pulls in more advertising dollars than the World Series pulls in over it's entire series (obviously 4-7 games).

http://www.tns-mi.com/news/01252006.htm

Last year's World Series was the lowest rated World Series EVER. The most watched game was game 4, which drew a 14.8/24. The World Series only averaged a 11.1/19. Meanwhile, the Super Bowl drew a 41.1/62 and was the 2nd most watched tv event ever, behind only the final MASH episode in 1983. Don't believe me?

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/i-can-see-your-house-from-here-2005-world-series-tv-ratings/

http://www.baseball-almanac.com/ws/wstv.shtml

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11205332/

Let's talk about how much television pays the NFL vs MLB to televise their respective games. Let's see.

CBS pays 622.5 mil/yr for the AFC package, FOX pays 712.5 mil/yr for the NFC package, ESPN pays 1.1 billion/yr for Monday Night Football and NBC pays 650 mil/yr for Sunday Night Football. That adds up to 3.085 billion/yr.

Meanwhile Fox pays MLB 416 mil/yr to televise Saturday baseball, the All Star game, some divisional series playoff games, the league championship series and the World Series. ESPN also pays 296 mil/yr to show some regular season and divisional playoff games. That adds up to 712 million/yr.

http://www.answers.com/topic/nfl-on-television

http://www.answers.com/topic/major-league-baseball-television-contracts

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/sports/articles/0915mlbtv0915.html

There used to be a Monday Night Baseball game on ABC, similar to Monday Night Football. Do people remember that? But not anymore.

How much NFL merchandise is sold compared to MLB merchandise? I can't find any hard data to verify this, but I can say that I see many more people wearing football jerseys vs baseball jerseys. I also know that after the Red Sox World Series win in 2004 that the Yankees and the Red Sox accounted for 53% of all licensed merchandise sales.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2027064

Let's compare the coverage the draft receives between the two sports, or the coverage that these sports receive on the college level.

How many people purchase the NFL season package vs the MLB season package?

[El Gordo]

You forgot to mention that baseball used to be the national past time but not anymore (by a long shot). You forgot to mention how a regular season NFL game will be watched by more viewers than any regular season baseball game and will often outdraw most MLB playoff games.

Check the ratings for the Oakland Raiders - Denver Broncos game vs the Mets - Cardinals game yesterday (when they are released). I wouldn't be surprised if the NFL game had higher tv ratings. What does that say?

MLB playoff games can't even win their time slot much less outdraw the NFL.

Game 1 of the Yankees - Tigers playoff series on FOX finished 4th that night behind ABC (Dancing with the stars), CBS (NCIS and The Unit) and NBC (Friday Night Lights and Law and Order:Criminal Intent). That Yankee - Tiger game drew 8.36 million viewers. Meanwhile, Sunday Night Football drew 15.14 million viewers that week. For comparison, 13 NFL games outdrew primetime's 5 most watched season finales last year.

http://www.zap2it.com/tv/ratings/zap-ratings100306,0,7959674.story

http://www.calendarlive.com/tv/ratings/cl-et-tvratingstext11oct11,0,5868611.htmlstory?coll=cl-tvratings

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/s_456970.html

Let's talk about how many viewers tune in to the Super Bowl (90.7 million last year) vs a World Series game, or about how much advertisers pay to show their ads during these 2 events.

Advertisers paid approx 2.5 million for a 30 second spot during the Super Bowl last year.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/01/26/superbowl/main1241339.shtml

The Super Bowl, even though it's a single game, often pulls in more advertising dollars than the World Series pulls in over it's entire series (obviously 4-7 games).

http://www.tns-mi.com/news/01252006.htm

Last year's World Series was the lowest rated World Series EVER. The most watched game was game 4, which drew a 14.8/24. The World Series only averaged a 11.1/19. Meanwhile, the Super Bowl drew a 41.1/62 and was the 2nd most watched tv event ever, behind only the final MASH episode in 1983. Don't believe me?

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/i-can-see-your-house-from-here-2005-world-series-tv-ratings/

http://www.baseball-almanac.com/ws/wstv.shtml

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11205332/

Let's talk about how much television pays the NFL vs MLB to televise their respective games. Let's see.

CBS pays 622.5 mil/yr for the AFC package, FOX pays 712.5 mil/yr for the NFC package, ESPN pays 1.1 billion/yr for Monday Night Football and NBC pays 650 mil/yr for Sunday Night Football. That adds up to 3.085 billion/yr.

Meanwhile Fox pays MLB 416 mil/yr to televise Saturday baseball, the All Star game, some divisional series playoff games, the league championship series and the World Series. ESPN also pays 296 mil/yr to show some regular season and divisional playoff games. That adds up to 712 million/yr.

http://www.answers.com/topic/nfl-on-television

http://www.answers.com/topic/major-league-baseball-television-contracts

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/sports/articles/0915mlbtv0915.html

There used to be a Monday Night Baseball game on ABC, similar to Monday Night Football. Do people remember that? But not anymore.

How much NFL merchandise is sold compared to MLB merchandise? I can't find any hard data to verify this, but I can say that I see many more people wearing football jerseys vs baseball jerseys. I also know that after the Red Sox World Series win in 2004 that the Yankees and the Red Sox accounted for 53% of all licensed merchandise sales.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2027064

Let's compare the coverage the draft receives between the two sports, or the coverage that these sports receive on the college level.

How many people purchase the NFL season package vs the MLB season package?

Than Dom Perignon. Football is the modern day equivalent of bread and circuses; baseball is a sport.

[DrungoHazewood]

You forgot to mention that baseball used to be the national past time but not anymore (by a long shot). You forgot to mention how a regular season NFL game will be watched by more viewers than any regular season baseball game and will often outdraw most MLB playoff games.

(lots of stuff)

How many people purchase the NFL season package vs the MLB season package?

Just a few comments. Baseball used to be the national pastime, but it was that in an era with little competition. For the first 40 or 50 years of professional baseball its main competitors were boxing and horse racing. It was the only professional team sport of any consequence.

Football/baseball comparisons are often apples/oranges things. I'm not denying that football is more popular, but one big reason is the way the sports are structured. Football concentrates itself to one game a week per team. Baseball (and hockey, and basketball, which have worse ratings "problems" than baseball) spread their games and their playoffs out over many games. NASCAR is like football, but more concentrated - many fewer events with all of the major players involved in nearly every one. Comparing straight average attendance or TV ratings points doesn't exactly do baseball justice.

TV ratings in general are waaaaaaay down from prior eras. Baseball ratings used to be much greater, but that's partially because the game of the week was on one of the four channels you got. Now almost everyone has 100 or more channels to choose from, and naturally many are going to watch something besides the Mariners-Dodgers game on Fox.

I'd like to see a similar comparison between the NBA and hockey and any other North American team sport and Football. Hockey and Basketball would probably compare to baseball similarly to how baseball compares to football. You don't have to be the NFL to thrive.

[Frobby]

You forgot to mention that baseball used to be the national past time but not anymore (by a long shot). You forgot to mention how a regular season NFL game will be watched by more viewers than any regular season baseball game and will often outdraw most MLB playoff games.

If your point is that football is more popular than baseball, then I agree. That's different from saying that baseball is in trouble, though. From Forbes, published in April 2006:

Baseball owners continue to slam the ball out of the park. Team values increased an average of 15% for the second consecutive year, to $376 million, in our 2006 survey of Major League Baseball's 30 franchises. Overall operating income increased to $360 million ($12.1 million per team) from $132 million ($4.4 million per team) the previous year, as revenue increased faster than player salaries.

http://www.forbes.com/2006/04/17/06mlb_baseball-team-valuations-cx_mo_0420sports.html

I prefer football's salary cap system to the luxury tax system that baseball has. But that does not mean that the salary cap and so-called "parity" is the reason that football has outstripped baseball in popularity. Football passed baseball a long time ago, long before the current systems were in place.

[Fan4Life]

If your point is that football is more popular than baseball, then I agree. That's different from saying that baseball is in trouble, though. From Forbes, published in April 2006:

http://www.forbes.com/2006/04/17/06mlb_baseball-team-valuations-cx_mo_0420sports.html

I prefer football's salary cap system to the luxury tax system that baseball has. But that does not mean that the salary cap and so-called "parity" is the reason that football has outstripped baseball in popularity. Football passed baseball a long time ago, long before the current systems were in place.

I would be interested in finding the actual numbers, but in theory, baseball still has the edge:

2005 numbers

Sport  Total Attendance   Avg Tkt Price    Total Revenue

NFL      17,200,334           $58.95           $1,013,959,099

MLB      74,385,295           $21.17           $1,574,736,695

Now obviously this isn't actual revenue received, but still interesting that all things being equal, Baseball wins.

[oriole_way]

Just a few comments. Baseball used to be the national pastime, but it was that in an era with little competition. For the first 40 or 50 years of professional baseball its main competitors were boxing and horse racing. It was the only professional team sport of any consequence.

Football/baseball comparisons are often apples/oranges things. I'm not denying that football is more popular, but one big reason is the way the sports are structured. Football concentrates itself to one game a week per team. Baseball (and hockey, and basketball, which have worse ratings "problems" than baseball) spread their games and their playoffs out over many games. NASCAR is like football, but more concentrated - many fewer events with all of the major players involved in nearly every one. Comparing straight average attendance or TV ratings points doesn't exactly do baseball justice.

TV ratings in general are waaaaaaay down from prior eras. Baseball ratings used to be much greater, but that's partially because the game of the week was on one of the four channels you got. Now almost everyone has 100 or more channels to choose from, and naturally many are going to watch something besides the Mariners-Dodgers game on Fox.

I'd like to see a similar comparison between the NBA and hockey and any other North American team sport and Football. Hockey and Basketball would probably compare to baseball similarly to how baseball compares to football. You don't have to be the NFL to thrive.

You make some good points.

However, even if comparing the NFL and MLB is apples and oranges, it still doesn't take away from the trend that MLB ratings are in general stagnating or decreasing. CBS lost half a billion dollars from their baseball contract in the early 90s. In 1995, ABC and NBC decided that "The Baseball Network" was a failure and opted out of their agreement with MLB.

"In 1997, just before the start of NBC's coverage of the World Series, West Coast entertainment division president and former NBC Sports executive producer Don Ohlmeyer came under fire after publicly announcing that he hoped that the World Series would end in a four game sweep. Ohlmeyer believed that baseball now lacked broad audience appeal (especially in the aftermath of the 1994 baseball strike)."

"In addition, Ohlmeyer feared that the World Series would disrupt NBC's efforts to attract enough viewers for its new fall roster in order to stay on top of the ratings heap. Ohlmeyer said 'If the A&E channel called, I'd take the call.'"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_League_Baseball_television_contracts#Major_League_Baseball_on_CBS-TV:_1990-1993

Yes, football has it's season concentrated to 1 game per week per team vs baseball, where teams usually play 5-6 times per week.

However, football has games televised all day Sunday (1:00, 4:00 and 8:15) and has a game on Monday. Now they will have games on Thursday. That's a lot of football on TV, while there is not that much baseball on mainstream networks. Yet people will tune in the the NFL, regardless of whether there are 100 other channels available.

We could compare baseball to hockey and basketball, since their seasonal formats are more similar. However, hockey is not a popular sport in this country and never has been. (Apologies to any hockey fans that might be reading this, but that is true.) Saying baseball is more popular than hockey wouldn't prove anything.

Meanwhile, look at the NBA and NCAA basketball. They have come a long way in the past 25 years or so. The NBA championship used to be on tape delay. Then Dr. J, Bird and Magic "saved" the league.

Now ABC/ESPN pay the NBA 400 million per year to televise their games. TNT pays 366.67 mil/yr. That adds up to 766.67 million per year, which beats the number for baseball (712 mil/yr).

http://www.insidehoops.com/nba-tv-contracts.shtml

On the other hand, TV ratings for the NBA have also stagnated since Michael Jordan retired (didn't look this up, but it seems to me that that's the case) and I believe that the NBA finals ratings were slightly lower than those of last year's World Series (they averaged a 9.5), and the number of global viewers that watched the World Series slightly outnumbered the NBA Finals (22 mil to 20 mil) according to

http://www.exchange4media.com/e4m/media_matter/matter_010406.asp

But are we satisfied that MLB and the NBA are duking it out for #2 and #3?

[DrungoHazewood]

But are we satisfied that MLB and the NBA are duking it out for #2 and #3?

No, not really, but how do you propose this gets changed? These are huge, generational shifts. I don't think marketing and building youth ballfields is going to cut it. If anything baseball faces stiffer challenges in the future since the number of kids playing soccer is many multiples of those playing little league.

In the end I don't think baseball is going to ever become as wildly popular as it once was because there are far more choices today. But I'm not going to lose much sleep as long as a franchise that hasn't had a winning season in a decade is still worth half a billion dollars and draws 2 million fans a season. #2/#3 still means a multi-billion dollar industry flush with cash and millions upon of millions of fans.

[Frobby]

But are we satisfied that MLB and the NBA are duking it out for #2 and #3?

Frankly, why should I care? Personally, I prefer baseball to the other sports. But it really doesn't matter to me whether baseball is more popular than football (which I also like), so long as baseball is financially viable and I can watch the games.

The bigger issue is whether baseball is driving away some of its fans because several teams have almost no chance to win. That has nothing to do with football, basketball or any other sport. And unfortunately, Drungo hit the nail on the head there.