Embracing the Medium: Explaining Baseball’s Resurgence
In the 2010s baseball hit a crisis as attendance and viewership began to topple. For the entire decade, the league failed to grow attendance in back-to-back years. Yet, since 2017 MLB attendance and viewership have steadily returned, barring the 2020 COVID season and parts of the 2021 season when attendance was limited. The MLB is not just making a rebound but is entering a renaissance. In 2023 the league saw its largest percentage increase in attendance in 30 years and fans watched over 12 billion minutes on MLBTV alone. There’s a lot of conjecture as to why baseball is on the rise. Some point to the emergence of generational all-stars such as Aaron Judge, Juan Soto, and Shohei Ohtani. Others will say that the recent rule changes that make the game tighter and more palatable are leading to these increases. Those two factors help, but the much simpler answer is that baseball is better suited to the way we consume media now, and the MLB is capitalizing on that.
Foolish Baseball, a YouTube content creator known for 16-bit-themed baseball analytics videos, released a new video on September 27th entitled “Wide Screen Ruined Baseball | Baseball Bits.”
In this video Foolish Baseball, or Bailey, recounts the history of baseball and the different ways it was consumed. The sport dominated in the age of radio and 4:3 standard definition TV because baseball did not need as much screen space to communicate what was happening. When high definition came around and aspect ratios increased to 16:9 baseball gained dead space, while sports like football and basketball gained space for active plays to be seen.
As you can see in the image above baseball does not lose any play space between 4:3 and 16:9, it’s free real estate. While the 4:3 football example is not centered on the score bug, it is centered on the QB showing how much space downfield is gained in the 16:9 high-definition example. Baseball took a hit during the mid-2000s to late 2010s because it was not suited for and did not gain anything from the way we were consuming media. But as Bailey pointed out at the end of his video, the way we consume media has changed.
It is hard to argue with his assertion that baseball translates well to the age of Insta reels, Snap stories, and TikToks. It is difficult to explain, so just take a look at this Instagram Reel the official MLB account posted after game 161 between the Braves and Mets:
All MLB did for this clip was crop it to fit the format of a phone screen, and it is still extremely visually appealing and easy to follow. They posted it on YouTube and got over 10K views. This clip was also posted on the MLB Instagram where it got over 620K views and TikTok where it got 40K views. So Foolish Baseball is right, baseball meshes well with the way we currently consume media. But these numbers are fairly normal for social media. However, with the amount of content baseball has, 4,860 games worth of content in the regular season to be exact, the sport is able to drastically extend its reach on social media.
When you take a look at how MLB”s social media pages compare to the NFL or NBA’s you can see new apps are better for baseball. The MLB trails the NFL and NBA on major social media apps such as Instagram and X. This trend holds with TikTok, but there is a substantial shift in MLB’s audience share on the app.
While TikTok represents the MLB’s smallest following it stands as the sport’s strongest audience share when compared to X and Instagram. This indicates baseball’s slight boost when it comes to younger users on newer media platforms.
Where Foolish ends and I want to dig deeper is how the MLB is succeeding by encouraging the growth of content creators on a variety of platforms and meeting fans where they are. Every MLB team clearly understands its inherent advantage over other sports on these platforms, so many of them have begun partnering with content creators and influencers to engage deeper with their fans. Even Foolish Baseball is an example of this, as the MLB now gives him press access to events such as the All-Star Game and Winter Meetings.
When it comes to baseball talk shows or entertainment the sport has had a complete exodus from conventional cable channels. Local stations still do game analysis, but any coverage of baseball on SportsCenter or ESPN is rare. When there is coverage it usually includes blunders, such as when Stephen A. Smith questioned how athletes get injured in non-contact sports or criticized Shohei Ohtani for using an interpreter. Baseball is no longer relevant to these stations and reporters, and it shows in their coverage.
This all coincided with the rise in podcasting. The late 2010s saw a flurry of podcasts on true crime, sports, and so many other topics pop up as it became a more mainstream form of entertainment. This would be a perfect medium for a highly regionalized sport that needed more people talking about it. Baseball podcasts began popping up such as Section 10 founded in 2015 to cover the Red Sox and Talkin’ Yanks founded in 2017 to cover the Yankees. Podcasts that cover the entire league have also gained steam. It is an understatement to say podcasting has taken over the baseball scene. The MLB is encouraging this as well by providing press access to many of these shows. The league and teams are starting to work in tandem with these content creators.
Even TikTokers are starting to be taken more seriously as media representatives. Some accounts like BatBoysBaseball on TikTok have nearly 500k followers and are given field access to do fast and light one-on-one interviews with players. Allowing creators access like this does wonders to grow the game and the MLB is fully aware of that. The league understands its inherent advantage of presentation on the screen and is getting the jump on adapting to how fans now consume content.
