I was watching Ken Burns’ great two-part documentary on Benjamin Franklin this week when I noticed one of so many thoughts of relevance…Franklin was asked about why at his advanced age does he still care about goings on that should be taken up by younger people, and how he knows if something he is doing is impactful.
You need to maintain relevance even if you feel you are being unheard. What is the best barometer of relevance on topics? Silence. If there is no talk of your engagements, you may cease to exist.
I thought a lot about the idea of relevance Dr. Franklin mentioned as MLB Opening Day approached this week. Has baseball, which many see as ancient and out of touch maybe as much as they see the ideas of The Founding Fathers, lost relevance for the masses? If you judge by relevance at this time of year…the amount of discussions online, the amount of business partnerships, the amount of media deals, the amount of people going to ballparks, the amount of debate over issues big and small in the game itself…its hard to see how baseball, even with its flaws is “irrelevant” for the majority of casual consumers in most of North America.
I was again reminded of the casual value baseball brings in a Facebook post by colleague Marlon LeWinter, who this past weekend took his wife and small kids, on a whim because it was a nice day, to a Mets spring training game in Port St. Lucie. They bought tickets, ate some food, picked up some souvenirs, played some games and enjoyed the day. Did they have to sit and watch nine innings pitch by pitch? No. That wasn’t the point. They went for what baseball is…a fun experience especially as the weather turns warmer.
I thought about the idea of baseball relevance again this morning after reading Tyler Kepner’s piece in the New York Times (yes, I read it in print and again online) which largely pointed to the same things…yes its flawed, there are issues in game length, GenZ might not be following religiously like other generations before, but that’s OK. Kepner pointed to numerous factors, even looking back over 100 years to a point Grantland Rice made in a column then that baseball was in trouble because of its lack of relevancy to a new generation…100 years ago!!!…yet if you look at what makes baseball special to millions…the numbers…it’s hard to argue with baseball success as a larger scale business. Maybe the numbers are not at the height of where they were before, but the business side of baseball, and its casual appeal, is more than sustainable. Read the piece here.
Baseball has flaws. It always has and always will. These days it often deals in extremes: lots of strikeouts, home runs and pitching changes. All of those aspects of the game, on their own, can be appetizing. At its best, though, a baseball game is a more balanced meal. Alarmists have concluded that this lack of action has doomed the poor old game. But if you study baseball history, you find that people always conjure reasons to criticize the sport. Every generation considers itself faster paced than the last, so baseball, which makes you wait for the action, is an easy target.
The changing face of America: The Latino population continues to grow in North America, and can you find a sport other than soccer more ingrained in Latino culture? Try watching a game for more than five minutes before you see, and hear, a rising, or veteran Latino name mentioned. Now Latino or Hispanic remains a bit of a catch all that has its flaws…Puerto Ricans, Dominicans and Mexicans have their own traditions…but baseball is a cross cultural success, with some its biggest stars, in both social media and on the field, young telegenic and marketable Latinos.
Digital access: Baseball may have been a bit slow to the party in marketing highlights to the masses like the NBA did as a first mover, but with new deals with Apple and Peacock, along with a growing number of regional streaming partnerships, it’s hard to argue that MLB is not trying to find its footing with new partners. Now are there growing pains again here? Some have taken to criticize MLB for pulling games from “free” access, but is it worth trying to again find ways to give a generation used to streaming on any device the ability to do so? There was a time wayyy back when not every game was on broadcast at all…and there was an even more recent time when local teams were killed for moving games off of “broadcast” and on to “cable.” Guess what, we adapted and survived and have even enjoyed much of the innovation. Should a game be offered in market in addition to on a streaming service? Yes. Just ask the NFL about their split deals to make sure the home market gets games no matter what platform they are on nationally. Should fans be able to know where to watch every game? Yes. But creating packages for streaming platforms is still part of growth for revenue and for partners who can best promote…going to 11:30 AM on Sundays for a Peacock package also brings all the assets of NBC back to baseball which further extends the talk of the sport throughout the summer and into the fall on yet another network is another example of expansive action.
Having watched the first of the two Friday night games on Apple + I walked away with many literal plusses and minuses…too much talking, missing actual game action, not enough reporting on the field…but I learned a great deal of tidbits from a different POV from what may be seen as “nontraditional” broadcast teams…with different graphics, stats and a fresh feel for a Friday night game in April…maybe it is better as an alternative broadcast…like a megacast is done…and it should be available in some way in home markets…but who is to fault the effort and let the production team listen and adjust a bit? (BTW Melanie Newman is a star.) And here is a great piece on micing players, which also was a great hit, something which would never have happened a few years ago and rarely happens in any other sport…
Then there are micropayment and short bytes of content that can be offered up. We have seen the NBA success with the last five minutes of games, and what a platform like Buzzer is doing testing the market for engagement and purchase on demand…how long before we get seventh inning stretch cam or the Scherzer plan? It is all part of the ways that fans can still engage and enjoy and keep conversations going around relevant moments every day.
Gaming: We constantly complain that younger generations would rather play “video games” than watch live events…and that they sit in front of “screens” for hours. MLB’s investment in MLB The Show as a property, as well as reengaging with other ways to gamify the sport in short bursts, has to throw credit to reaching a generation of gamers. Its again not perfect but it is yet another way to try and make the leap of a connection to a generation that may not fully embrace baseball as part of their lifestyle.
Into that gamification we will also drop all the tech and data opportunities for consumers both here now…NFT’s, growing VR and training modules…maybe some AR in the future…as well as every aspect of fantasy gaming…all of which baseball is trying to embrace. And let’s not forget traditional collectibles…giveaways and both the digital and tactile elements companies like Fanatics and Topps will offer up, all of which gives the volume of baseball (both MLB and now revamped MiLB another leg up on engagement).
Gambling: If sports gambling is going to continue to grow than it needs baseball, and baseball keeps finding ways to embrace the data and the engagement. There is probably no sport that has more “transaction points” than baseball for wagers big and small, and finding that fit that keeps fans engaged over long periods of time is going to continue to be important. Nine innings aren’t going away…three and a half hour games aren’t going away…but that doesn’t mean that casual fans have to watch every second of every game to still be engaged.
Partnerships: We just wrote about how two storied brands…or categories…found a way to cut through the clutter this week in Cracker Jack (Jill) and Dairy Queen. With every broadcast you keep seeing new brands in emerging categories…TikTok, STX, Cue etc. etc.…so to say there is not a market for baseball engagement isn’t accurate…it is evolving in various ways with categories ranging from Fintech to Health and Wellness to lifestyle finding that the ebbs and flow of baseball make sense for them.
Now none of this is to say that baseball is the shiny new toy. It has traditions that have been slow to change, but that has always been the case. What it also has is scale, it has history, it has a warm weather presence that other indoor sports would love to have. It has labor peace; it has a growing number of marketable stars who re now getting to embrace the social space more and more with their time challenged schedules.
It isn’t perfect, no mature business in any field is. And with every move to try and change, “traditionalists” ping it for forgetting its roots. It has to find balance.
But to say that baseball is going away would be silly to say, and frankly, the challenges the sport has are “issues” that most sports not NFL or NBA would love to have.
This summer we are craving such a return to full normalcy after two and a half tumultuous years. Part of that normalcy is baseball. Its an imperfect game just like us…but give it a shot on whatever device, for however long you want. Who knows, maybe you will enjoy it.
I think Dr. Franklin would enjoy the relevance as well.
