PHILADELPHIA _ At first glance, Major League Baseball's plan for resuming play is a solid one. Rather than cancel the season, or flout public health guidance regarding mass gatherings, all 30 teams would relocate to Arizona and play out their schedules using the sprawling spring training infrastructure that exists in the state. There, they would stage their games in front of empty stands while attempting to transform America's first and foremost spectator sport into a made-for-television spectacle.
It all sounds great, except for one small problem: Americans hate watching baseball on television.
Granted, those same Americans have spent their last three weeks watching videos of each other's pets, and nobody likes that either. But baseball in the 21st-century entertainment landscape is a special kind of dull. The last six years have seen four of the five lowest-rated World Series games in national television history. Last year, an average of 13.9 million viewers tuned in for the seven-game set between the Nationals and the Astros, the lowest total since 2012. At the All-Star Break last season, total viewership in local markets was down four percent, led by a 26% drop by the Yankees and a 12% drop by the Mets.
Traditionalists might not like to hear it, but baseball is a sport that is uniquely ill-suited to compete for eyeballs in a content market where viewers have the ability to watch 10 full hours of a bunch of methed-out tiger hoarders attempt to feed each other through meat grinders. Mike Trout has done a lot of things in his career, but he's never done that. And if there was a baseball player who had, it'd be one from Millville.
But necessity is the mother of invention, and baseball needs this plan to work. Experts suggest that at least 25% of the current social distancing guidelines will remain in place for the year or so that it will take to bring a COVID-19 vaccine to market. Unless the epidemiologists suddenly decide that it is actually a good idea to pack 40,000+ people into a 21-acre space, it seems likely that professional baseball games will fall in that quarter. Nobody wants to spend a muggy summer night amidst a smothering crowd of people ridden with disease.
All of this means that MLB owners are likely to lose most if not all of the roughly $10 billion in gate receipts that make up the bulk of their revenue each season. Last year, the Braves earned $5.4 million in revenue per home game, per the financial statements of their publicly-traded parent company. That includes local and national television payouts, but knowing what we do about those deals, it likely accounts for less than $1 million per game (the Braves' local TV contract pays them $83 million annually, while they share $525 million in national revenue with 30 other teams). The rest of that revenue is likely gone, a loss of more than $300 million over the course of a season for a team that reported $54 million in profit.
The reported Arizona Plan would help bridge that deficit by reducing travel expenses to (relatively) close to zero. Teams spend between $75,000 and $200,000 on each leg of a charter flight, which could mean a savings of $5 million-plus on air travel alone. Their biggest savings would likely come in the form of reduced salaries for the players, who would only be paid for the games that are actually played. Twenty% fewer games would mean teams pay 20% less salary, a savings of more than $30 million for a team like the Braves.
But no matter how it stacks up the nickels and dimes, baseball will be counting on its television contracts to make up for a massive shortfall. Which means it needs to give itself the potential to attract the largest possible viewing audience. And that means it needs to transform itself into something that it hasn't recently been: a sport that convinces its traditional customers to watch, but encourages even casual fans to do so.
In short, baseball needs to reinvent itself, if only for one abbreviated season. One thing we've learned about programming in the Age of Content Overload is that it must make itself the focus of conversation. From Bird Box to Tiger King to the NBA All-Star Game, the current marketplace has consistently rewarded programming that forces itself to the top of the box marked Trends. This, more than anything, is the area where baseball has failed.
The last 40 years have seen the two most television-friendly sports transform themselves philosophically, with the NFL legislating itself into a pass-first league and the NBA going all-in on the 3-pointer. While that's partly due to analytics and partly to do mind-set, it is mostly due to sports' willingness to tinker with their rules. The NBA has added a 3-point line, shortened its shot clock, eliminated timeouts, redefined what constitutes defense. The NFL has added a 2-point conversion, moved back the extra point, altered its rules for defending the pass.
Meanwhile, Major League Baseball allowed its balls to be covered in cowhide because of a shortage in horses. In 1975.
Unless you happen to be Smarty Jones, it's well past time for a change. The good news is that baseball has a perfect opportunity to experiment with its framework without permanently selling its soul to people with pulses. With fewer games and no fans and no home-field advantage, the 2020 season will already be disregarded as an aberration. It's time for baseball to reinvent itself in the form of Tiger King.
Sometimes, it pays to embrace the meth.
