Baseball Bubble.

There's a general sports bubble and one specific to baseball.

The bundling of television programs, particularly sports, for transmission by service providers like cable, phone and satellite companies will eventually break down, probably due to technological innovation rather than government regulation.  However it happens, sports networks will receive less money relative to total amount than currently resulting in less money to be paid to sports leagues.

As time marches on, older fans will fade away.  Will they be replaced by young fans or will young people spend their time doing things other than watching sports?  Even for those young people who become fans, their relationship to the three primary team games in America will be very very different, primarily because they will not play the games, especially baseball.

If baseball is merely an entertainment form rather than a shared experience, how entertaining will the 150 year old sport be with its slow pace and nonsensical structure and rules?  Young people will be less interested not only in attending baseball games but in even watching baseball games on television.  Ratings will fall and so will money from sponsors for commercials.

The current model of the Major Baseball League (MBL) lacks the self evaluation to even realize that the old American League and old National League merged into one league in 1999.  The MBL is about to play its annual All Star game to determine which conference champion gets home field and home rule (DH) advantage in a possible game seven in the tournament finals.  Silly, right?

Further eroding the recent model is a secondary market for tickets, which allows fans to wait until game day to purchase and thus pay much less than face value.

So MBL teams are faced with:
- fewer Americans playing baseball
- fewer fans at games
- paying less
- fewer viewers at home.

In addition big market v. small market rules that piled up over the decades lock teams into unsustainable business models, each self defeating in its own way.

Big market teams do not get good draft picks and can only acquire young talent by signing high priced free agents.  Small market teams cannot pay the young talent acquired through good draft picks and lack the imagination to try something different rather than fight an unwinnable battle using the same basic techniques as the big market teams.

When some of these sports bubbles burst, baseball as embodied in the MBL will encounter major problems.  When the baseball specific bubble bursts, the MBL will suffer irrevocable damage.  And few will care.