Agreed. I'm not checking the numbers, so I don't know when viewership for football passed baseball, but I think the writing was on the wall for baseball as soon as sports became televised. Baseball is a really good sport for radio, and football isn't. Football is a really good sport for tv and baseball isn't. How many people listen to radio anymore?

That period with the MLB strike and the Cowboys dynasty seems about right to me.

For me it was 89/90 when Marty arrived. That’s when KC became a football town almost overnight.

yep, baseball missed its chance because it caved to the players. If they had a real salary cap in baseball where the Dodgers and the royals spend the same amount of money, it would be in way better shape.

One of the keys to the the NFL dominance is its good for TV but also KC, Green Bay etc. have just as good of a chance as the large metro areas have to win.

94 during the baseball strike?

A more interesting question IMO is when do we think the NFL took this stratospheric leap to the point where anything it does dwarfs everything else in sports and does it relatively easy…it really has become the only 24/7/365 sport.

I get that football has always been huge but it didn’t used to be like it is now where hell the schedule release will have bigger ratings than playoff games in other sports…

The NFL has really figured it out, hell Fantasy Football is more popular than some mainstream sports lol.

1994. Realized what a joke of a “sport” baseball is during the strike. Whiny, overpaid players and greedy large-market owners unwilling to look at the NFL revenue sharing model that provides a chance for legitimate competition. The the K became an advertising billboard, further expanding how pathetic baseball is, and that the Royals would rarely be competitive, and the owners were simply trying to sell you something other than their product, so they could survive.

Yep, this 100%. Baseball not only needs a hard cap, but also a hard salary floor.

This would help the lower revenue teams, i.e. KC Royals from being nothing more than an extended farm league for the high revenue teams.

This is it. It was a different time. I remember how pissed my dad was about it. Nowadays ppl would blame the owners.

The Catch

Owners brought that on themselves. Ass-raping tax payers while their franchise evals skyrocket into the billions.

It's almost automatic for me anymore. I'm on the players side to get as much as they can. **** the owners.

I wouldn't say there's no hope, but very little. But the sad reality is that even if a small market team catches lightning in a bottle and wins, like the 2014-2015 Royals, they'll immediately get gutted by the big money teams.

I understand there are lots of things that get more interesting if you get into them. But for instance, bowling is never going to be a top 5 spectator sport.

My question, how was baseball ever more popular than football in the first place?

Joe Namath/Super Bowl III.

NBA ratings aren't that great, but they seemed to be more balanced between big market and small teams.

For decades, the big stars left for big markets as soon as they could to put together teams.

Okay LeBron went back to Cleveland after Miami but whatever.

And Toronto went all in one year and it worked out.

But now a number of small or at least, not traditional big NBA teams, are in the mix.