By Rick Stanton
Well, this is fairly stupid. Major League Baseball signed an exclusive agreement with Facebook to stream 25 baseball games—including a couple of Seattle Mariners games—the most recent on July 25.
At a time when baseball’s market is shrinking and it’s concerned about drawing younger fans, this move seems to alienate the foundation of their audience. That would be me.
I have two Facebook accounts, one I can’t access because I have no idea what the password is thanks to my past millennial employee who set it up. And while I can surely access the other one, I have no interest in watching a three-hour-plus game on a computer. Especially since I recently plunked down a meaningful chunk of change for a new 55-inch Sony XBR Bravia OLED 4K HDR Smart HDTV.
It’s truly remarkable. You can see the individual blades of grass on a ball field— when you can get the game on TV!
Is it not possible to try and woo the children from our second or third marriages onto their device and delivery channel of choice, while also keeping us folks who pay the freight for MLB plugged into their delivery channel of choice?
[Furthermore, I’m forced to listen to Rick Rizzs on the radio, blathering on about crap no one cares to hear. He should take a cue from the great former Dodgers broadcaster, Vin Scully, whose genius was knowing when to be silent and let the game dictate what was important to talk about.]
There are a lot of other really stupid ideas floating around the game of baseball, too. To wit:
• Lower the pitcher’s mound … again.
• Have a pitch clock so the guy on the bump doesn’t shake off his catcher 10 times, when he only has two pitches he can throw.
• Shorten the game to seven innings.
• Put a runner on second to begin an extra-inning game so he can score the potential winning run without doing anything to contribute to the outcome—other than having a pulse.
And I’m surprised someone hasn’t suggested enlarging the strike zone to the size of a refrigerator or changing an out to two strikes instead of three.
As a marketing professional, I get trying to attract new consumers. I also get utilizing new media. But why do it at the expense of traditional media and older fans of the game?
Show the games on Facebook or where ever. But don’t take them off TV at the same time. That’s got to be a bad business decision from a pure advertising-revenue standpoint, if nothing else.
Want to attract younger fans? Put in a pick-up bar in center field and sell $10 beers. Oh, I forgot, the M‘s have already done that.
https://www.engadget.com/2018/05/23/hardly-anyone-likes-baseball-on-facebook/