The fault, dear Levine, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.

With Fewer Stars at Yankee Stadium, Fewer Fans Are Watching

By ZACH SCHONBRUN
Published: July 1, 2013 The New York Times

Through 41 home games ... 6.1 percent drop that is almost twice as large as the overall decline in baseball ... the ratings on their YES Network were down 40 percent ...

Derek Jeter ... has yet to return to action since fracturing his ankle in October ... Alex Rodriguez ... has yet to play this season ...  no Curtis Granderson or Mark Teixeira ...

“The Yankees are known as a team of stars,” said Randy Levine, the team president, who acknowledged that the absence of Jeter, Rodriguez and the others was clearly having an impact “on the television side.”

what would surely stoke more interest would be the returns of Jeter and Rodriguez ...


“This is the Yankees,” he (Levine) said. “We’ve been around a lot of years. There will be more stars.”
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Friday, November 23, 2012
Baseball will crash in 2020.

Attendance at games is becoming less important as revenue increases from regional sports networks...

Few young Americans are playing baseball.  This will decrease interest in watching baseball even on TV.  With TV viewing down, advertising dollars will decrease and the bloated TV deals will wither contributing to the downward spiral...

Because Americans will stop playing or attending games, baseball will fade into history.
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Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Collapse is coming.

I don't care how many decades these deals seem to entail, if the ratings plummet, which I think they will, the advertising money will dry up and the inevitable downward spiral will blow down the house of cards.
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Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Those humongous TV deals: is that money guaranteed or what?

"If the money is guaranteed"?  Say what?  IF?  And this is just a legal if, not an economic if, as in the types of default in recent years in industries such as finance, auto, real estate.  What, sports, and the Major Baseball League (MBL) specifically, are immune?  If people stop watching twenty minutes of entertainment stretched out to four boring hours, how long do you think it will take the sponsors to realize that TV ratings have decreased and that triggers:
1. reduction in the money paid for ads according to contract
2. renegotiation
3. default.

Then what?  MBL teams cannot possibly pay those absurd amounts committed and "guaranteed" to individual players.
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We stop:
- playing
- attending
- watching.

Result:
- no ratings
- no ad money.

In 1961 the Yankees had New York all to themselves.  They were the only team in town.
- great pennant race
- great home run race: Mickey Mantle v. Roger Maris
- great attendance: 1,747,725

The 1961 attendance was most since 1951 and the decline from the post World War II boom years when the Yankees smashed their previous highs and exceeded 2,000,000 from 1946 through 1950.  The Yanks did not draw more than 1961 until 1976 when they started drawing 2,000,000 again.  They finally reached 3,000,000 in 1999, then 4,000,000 2005 through 2008 when they failed to reach the MBL tournament.  Then 3.7, 3.7, 3.6. 3.5 million.

In 2013 attendance has been 1,626,149 through 82 games.  But the estimated payroll is $224,675,750, most among teams in the Major Baseball League (MBL).  That's almost as much as they drew in 1961 for the entire season with Mantle & Maris, etc.  Talk about stars.

So what's the problem?

In 1961 we played baseball.  It was an integral part of our culture.  It was in our blood.  Today only old people feel that way.  Young people are bored with baseball as well they should be.  Remember, the greatest game ever played, game seven of the 1960 World Series, took only 2:36 to play and the score was 10-9.

The economic model is entrenched and self defeating.  Poor teams cannot keep their young stars, acquired through high draft picks.  Rich teams, who have low draft picks, can only acquire young stars by signing them as high priced free agents.  In 1961 there was no common draft of players.  That was instituted a few years later to impede the Yankees.

Interest will spiral down while teams cling to the illusion that the money will keep rolling in.  Their commitments to ultra high payrolls will falter as the ad money dries up with low ratings.

It may seem inconceivable to some.  Like General Motors defaulting.  Or huge financial institutions being too big to save much less bail out.

And the federal government will not bail out the MBL.  Not after all that state and local government money that has helped boost individual teams and their owners.

The fault is not a lack of star players.  It's the game itself and the organizational structure of the MBL.