points by justinrstout 1 day ago | 0 comments
On point 2: in my experience, the tradeoff is that baseball is the most accessible in-person major league sport. The quantity, length, and seasonal timing of games means that tickets are almost always affordable and can fit into my schedule. I go to more and more MLB games every year, whereas a ticket to my NFL team is a serious expenditure, and that's assuming that my schedule works out to where I can attend one of 8 home games for the entire year.
[–] jmyeet 1 day ago
[–] justinrstout 10 hours ago
> That's not something you can just do with other major sports.
This is specifically the appeal of in-person MLB games; it's no problem to get a group together: school, church, friends, family, or what have you, and roll up to a game on relatively short notice and have a low-stress experience. In this way it's in the same category as a museum or theme-park sort of outing.
Is it economically optimal? Maybe not, but I also don't think the product is trying to attract the same audience that's willing to engage in a high-coordination and high-intensity event like an NFL game. I know both folks who love the spectacle and effort of the NFL experience and folks who like catching a baseball game with their group when they have a free afternoon, and they don't really overlap.
I also think about how sports are portrayed or used as dressing in media. Seinfeld, for example, was from an era where people often went to baseball games and knew all the player stats. People in previous generations would take their scorecards to games [1]. None of that really exists anymore.
[1]: https://www.wuwm.com/2023-04-10/this-baseball-season-try-an-...