What year did football become bigger than Baseball
 

?

Like.. 92?

69

Tree fiddy

When the Steelers started their run.

In Kansas City? Probably 1990 or 1991?

After the MLB strike in 1994. That pissed a lot of people off that never came back.

1997

I would have to go with this. Plus the Royals were pretty good that year and were making a push at the moment in the AL Central. They were like 2-3 games back. And then play stopped. God did that piss me off!! Baseball died inside of me because of that. I've never really cared about it the same since. Not even during the Royals WS years. I watched but my heart really hasn't been with them since 94. And I really used to be a die hard Royals fan. I grew up with the memories of sitting out on the front porch at my Grandparents house in KC with my Grandpa during the summer. Listening to the Royals games on his portable radio that could pick up every band there was including shortwave. He let me drink beer with him I'm 15-16 ect. We sat there and listened to the Royals and drank Hamns beer and shot the shit. A lot of times my Dad and older bros and Uncles were there also. It was great times and great Royals memories too.
This would have been early to mid 70's

Late 90s for me.

The internet helped me follow my team, the Kansas City Chiefs and get the NFL news. I remember getting with a group of Chiefs fans on AOL, so new and different at the time.

At roughly the same time MLB hooked up with cable making it harder to get Royals games out of market IIRC.

Early 90’s

Once MLB got all the mega TV contracts for just a few teams and only a few teams win every year for the last 30+ years.

There is no hope in MLB for 90% of the teams.

I think that’s about right. There’s a line in the 1973 movie “Bang the Drum Slowly” where a doctor tells a baseball player he’s treating, “I hear it’s a dying sport.”

There’s also this:

https://news.gallup.com/poll/610046/...5%20basketball).

That is interesting. For me, having so many opportunities (162 vs 16) to take my kids to a game in KC was a big deal. Plus, back when the Royals games were broadcast over antenna, it was fun to watch them almost daily.
Will never forget George Brett standing on second base going over .400

The Chiefs even making the playoffs back then was pretty much out of the question but I watched them every Sunday anyway.

I feel like this is when it really shifted. The strike coupled with Dallas becoming a team that everyone either jumped on the bandwagon or absolutely hated. This created a bunch of rivalries and banter between fans. I feel like it really took off from there. That’s just my experience, anyway.

This is a big part of it. I have friends that are big baseball fans and they are constantly complaining about how they can't watch any of the games when they live in market because of dumb tv contracts and blackout rules.

Also the way baseball is structured there is no incentive to be competitive. Everyone always talks about how there is no cap, but there being no salary minimum is just as bad. So many teams spend the bare minimum and still make a profit.

Baseball is a sport made for radio. That generation is gone

Don’t overlook the role fantasy football has played in the popularity of the NFL. It’s been around for way longer, but it really started gaining traction in the mid-90s.

Football has always been bigger than bsseball for me. But as a kid, I loved playing baseball more until about Jr. High. Mainly because it was so easy to get a game going. But always loved watching football more.

l think the McGuire/Sosa home run race saved baseball. It became a national story way beyond baseball fans. The fans came back the next year in their normal sizes/

Then the steroids scandals hit and football went to another level and "America's Game" was now football.

Wellll my son is a 6th generation fan of the Cardinals. So for at least one more generation, our family has baseball fans.

You guys are way off. Football in national surveys passed baseball in the 60s. I am inmy mid 50s and football has always been more popular. The only thing that has changed is the gap.

I didn’t care for baseball and still really don’t since when I was first introduced to it, there wasn’t a cap?? Maybes that’s changed now but I remember how the Yankees were spending like 10x than the Oakland A’s for example so to me it was sortve like why would I watch a sport where there’s just gonna be the same 3-5 winners every year??

The MLB owners are monumentally stupid. The exclusive cable deals where 50% or more the fans couldn't watch games any more, the steroids that they allowed to prop up attendance and then pretended to be against later and the payrolls that are so far apart that half the league barely competes.

They've done everything they can over the past 30+ years to suffocate the fan support.

I agree it was after the baseball strike. My question is why did football not experience the same downturn when they went on strike and played with replacement players?

I think most fans sided with the players. As they should have. The owners were ****ing the players royally and pocketing the money. For whatever reason, the public in general, blamed both the baseball players and owners.

Definitely 1994 for me. I was 10 years old and baseball was my life. I was basically one of the kids from the movie The Sandlot. I lived, breathed and slept baseball. Football was my fall sport and I loved it, but not like baseball. Then the strike, and as a 10 year old having the situation explained to me, I couldn’t even grasp it. It was a gut punch.

Didn’t really recover for a good 10 years, completely lost interest except for somewhat following how the Braves were doing. The past 5-6 as I have gotten older and my sons are both in travel ball, I’ve rediscovered my love for it but it will never surpass football now. Think there are many dudes who have this exact same story I’m sure.

Yeah, this. If I remember right the hapless Indians was actually in first. SI had a cover that said "Don't do it".

Haven't watched a game since except for the Royals world series.

I understand it's a business but I'm a customer and I don't have to watch. Before anyone says "don't bitch, show them with your wallet"....that's what I did. I'd like to try again but can't seem to give a **** anymore.

I have Patty in my life. **** baseball

Like some people have said, I bet the numbers reflect it happening a long time ago but from an optics standpoint, the strike put baseball in a noose and the steroid scandal post 98 pulled the lever.

I am very curious to see what happens over the next 20 years or so. As older folks die out, who is gonna pick up that slack for MLB fan-ship?

The one saving grace is that there is literally nothing going on outside of baseball over the summer.

I'd have to drink an unhealthy amount of booze to sit through a baseball game.

I can watch any level of football game anywhere, anytime.

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.

I guess maybe?

I tried a quick search to see if that really changed popularity but couldn't find much.

I'd guess somewhere in the 70s where college and the pro-game became a bigger pull on the public consciousness.

Major league ownership has really failed the sport imo. You have the easiest sport to put a kid in. It takes talent yea, but any kid can go hit off a tee and get involved. Football on the other hand gives kids one good hit and that scrawny kid whose hearts not in it is never coming back. Every kid should grow up playing a little baseball and be a fan to an extent. Baseball kids get to play 2-3 games a week. Football kids practice 3-4 times and play 8-12 games a year.

My son loves playing baseball he’s a 10 year old playing up in 12u. He wants to play fall ball and quit football then try out for a traveling team. But he runs home from practice and games and turns on YouTube to watch NFL programming. For the same reason he hates playing football barely any games played, he loves the NFL because every game matters. You can’t get him to watch anything about baseball let alone a game on tv (like there’s any of those available without a subscription).

Baseballs getting overtaken by soccer at least where I’m at. And it’s baseballs fault.

I think on a national scale 94 is the right answer.

For me baseball was biggest for me when I was a kid because the Royals were really good and had won a World Series. In fact that's when I started following sports. Marty ball is what started pulling me closer to football.

The last MLB strike. I think that is either 1994 or 1995.

I’m guessing when people started growing brains.

Baseball has been a regional sport my entire life (I’m 47) but perception changes much slower relative to reality. Once upon a time there were baseball towns but even in StL football has been king for a long time. Football has been king for probably about as long as pro football has been more popular than college and its rise can be linked IMO to increased tv coverage and Americans access to it - baseball as stated ITT was made for radio. The survey linked at the beg of this thread by someone shows 1972 as a line of demarcation which makes sense when you consider the growth of televisions in US households throughout the 1960s.

I agree with this.

MLB “felt” very important in the late 90’s. Those Yankees teams were a big ****ing deal.

But the Steroid Era and everything that followed really took the shine off the league.

It was sorta the equivalent of the Tour de France and Lance Armstrong. Normal people actually watched cycling back then. Then the scandal hit, and it never “felt” the same.

For me, it all started in 1971... baseball bores the bejesus outta me

For myself, Ripken breaking the record saved baseball in my heart. At least until pretty recently. Until that moment, you could’ve razed every ballpark to the ground and I wouldn’t have cared.

That was it for me. I was an avid Royals fan, now I haven't seen a game of theirs in over 3 years and don't care.

Nothing better than the radio and a patio on a summer evening. I grew up on Buddy Blattner/Denny Matthews and then Fred White and Denny Matthews on radio. Al Wisk and Denny Trease on TV when it was long before these MLB cable **** ups.

Then they hired Bob Davis and he was just kinda okay but also kinda terrible.

Still the #1 game in my heart. I lived and breathed it as a kid. Watched all those episodes of This Week In Baseball with the show's theme music on my phone during the season.

Soccer is easier.

Run after ball, try to kick it that way.

I played soccer and first base softball as a little kid. Little kids can't throw accurately to first base.

I played soccer as a kid, but that never created a desire on my part to watch soccer. Soccer just isn't that interesting as a spectator sport.

I never played football, but yeah, I always found it interesting to watch.

Probably 1960’s or early 1970’s. Wikipedia says the biggest World Series TV rating was 1978 and 1980, both of them around 42-44 million American viewers. By comparison, the Super Bowl made it above 75 million American viewers during this time period.

Way more parity in baseball than the NFL especially when it comes to championships. But facts don't matter to CP. 8 different champions in the last 9 years. In NFL, Brady and Mahomes have 6 of the 9 Super Bowl wins. In the NBA, LeBron and Curry have 6 of the 9 NBA Finals wins.

Royals have the same number of World Series wins in the last 40 years as the Dodgers, Cardinals, and Braves. Yankees haven't been to the World Series since 2009.

If you ask baseball blowhards, they'll insist we're still living like it's the 1950s, where every boy is handed a baseball glove out of the womb

The strike year in the 90s is when I think it happened.

Looked it up, 94-95.

Basketball was king in the 90's for what I remember.

I felt like the Greatest Show on Turf took the NFL to new heights. The 1999 St. Louis Rams changed everything.

In the NFL having a future HOF QB makes a huge difference. In the NFL, small market teams have generally been able to hang on to them after drafting them.

So you have parity in that sense. Young, Favre, Indy/Manning, Brady, KC/Mahomes but it can take years for the pendulum to swing.

In the NBA, the super stars have typically left for big markets as soon as they could. Although the last few years have bucked the trend of the big market teams dominanting somewhat.

The Yankees still have what, one in four or one in five of every World Series title? Bought with one of the highest payrolls.

I don't think the NFL dependence on having a top 5 QB to have much of a shot for winning the title is actually good for the league overall. Although obviously if that's how it's going to work, I'm thrilled to have Mahomes.

Basketball did seem like king for a while in the 90s.

NBA basketball was incredible in the 80's. Lakeshow, Celtics, 76'ers and a bevy of teams that were folded in from the ABA with superstar talent.

Solid point. My boss pushes his kids to play soccer because when practice at the indoor facilities or play there in the winter he can get a beer.

I always thought a football was bigger than a baseball....... :hmmm:



https://www.anjournal.com/sites/anjo...Ar00701020.jpg

I do fear football will eventually go the way of baseball. As it pushes for more games. ect. It's a long way from being that watered down but they really should stop pushing longer seasons and work on a developmental spring type league or something. Put a higher quality product on the field not the same one but more tired and spread out.

I turn on baseball if I want to listen to some background ambiance when I take a nap.

Pretty close to me as well. Followed the Royals more until that point.

I have to agree with many posters on here that MLB was way better pre strike.

Made me remember something: another nail in the coffin for me was the widespread use of metrics. Took a lot of the drama/excitement out of the game for me.

Bigger than baseball? Not sure.

Better than baseball? The day it was conceived.

Had to be more recent than the strike, I remember some playoff series from the early/mid-20s were top stories.

I'd put a vote toward the TV contracts - baseball has been an outlier in how regional it is and when locals can't watch their team then interest falls pretty quickly.

Ironically that parity probably hurts the World Series' TV ratings.

Big teams/big brands making it every year such as the Yankees, Dodgers etc. would no doubt help increase TV ratings.

that is the best thing to do at a baseball game

I could not tell you the last time I watched a full baseball game on tv.

I watched the first Wolves playoff game and was thoroughly BORED. I dont know if it was that I am uninterested, or the announcers sucked. But I wont make that mistake again.

The strike season of 1994 was pretty much the end of my baseball life. That was the last year I played little league. Up to that point if I wasn't watching the Royals on tv, I was listening on the radio. Every single game. I was really enjoying the Royals that season too.

When the strike happened, I moved on to basketball and football and never really looked back. I am still a Royals fan but I've never been invested in the regular season like I was when I was a kid.

I think it was before the 94 Major League baseball strike. A long time before that. Probably in the '70s when the Steelers were kicking ass.