Is baseball dying? Has baseball lost its cool? Many news sources and people believe that baseball is in decline. They think that baseball is past its time and on the way to its grave; however, this notion is false, and the evidence supports that baseball is in fact just fine. The facts show baseball games are gaining attendance, that Major League Baseball’s (MLB’s) revenue is growing, and rules are being added to speed up the game. Starting off, the main argument used for baseball losing its cool is the length and speed of the games. Some people say that it is too slow to appeal to younger demographics. The MLB has and is continuing to improve the speed of the game by implementing rules that reduce the amount of wasted time. "The average baseball game length [was cut] by 12 minutes" (Schwartz par. 2) from 2014 to 2015. That decrease may seem small, but a four minute a game difference in time " adds up to additional 6.83 days worth of baseball"(Schwartz par. 3) over the course of a season. That means the twelve minute a game reduction has reduced the total length of games played in the MLB a year by around eighteen days. That number is also expected to get larger as the MLB looks into more ways to help baseball games become faster. This speeding up and refining of rules contributes to the fact that baseball attendance still outperforms most sports.The number of people who attend baseball games during the seasons is still in the 70 millions. Sometimes, growing as shown in 2015 " Paid attendance in Major League Baseball for 2015 regular season was up slightly from 2014 making it the seventh-highest all-time" (Brown "MLB Sees Nearly" 1). Baseball also has the strongest attendance of the Major League sports. "In fact, Major League Baseball's total attendance (74.9 million) is greater than the [NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLS] sports leagues combined (65.9 million)" (Gaines par. 3). A sport hasn't lost its cool when it still has more people attend its game than many of its competitors combined. Large ticket sales also contribute to the MLB having a growing revenue. When a sport is losing its cool its revenue should be shrinking, but that is simply not the case for baseball. As stated by Maury Brown "[MLB] can report gross revenues for 2016 are approaching an incredible $10 billion. That figure marks the 14th consecutive year that baseball has posted record revenue. Growth for the league was approx. a half-a-billion dollars for the year" (Brown "MLB sees record" par. 2). A sport that has lost its cool should not have a revenue gain around a half-a-billion dollars. This, in turn, supports the idea that baseball may be growing. In conclusion, baseball is not dying, and baseball has certainly not lost its cool. The evidence supports baseball is fine or possibly growing shown by: increasing revenue, higher game attendance, and rules being added to speed up the game to appeal to a younger audience. Works CitedBrown, Maury. “MLB Sees Nearly 73.8 Million In Attendance For 2015, Seventh-Highest All-Time.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 6 Oct. 2015. Brown, Maury. “MLB Sees Record Revenues Approaching $10 Billion For 2016.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 5 Dec. 2016. Gaines, Cork. “SPORTS CHART OF THE DAY: Baseball Attendance Is Greater Than NFL, NHL, And NBA Combined.” Business Insider, Business Insider, 31 Oct. 2012. Schwartz, Nick. “MLB's Average Game Time Increase Adds up to Days of Extra Baseball.” Fox Sports, 17 May 2016. If the citations look wrong download the file below.
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Maddie
2/15/2017 11:25:31 am
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