NFL
Two months into the 2023 Major League Baseball season, two things are certain: Games are shorter, and fans love this new, fast-paced ball style. The average nine-inning MLB game lasts 2 hours and 37 minutes. That’s 28 minutes shorter than last season, and the shortest league average for a nine-inning contest since 1984 (not including extra-inning games).
MLB Talent on Full Display
But the length of games is a side note to the more action-packed, exciting baseball we’re watching today. In those roughly 2 1/2 hours of play, stolen-base attempts are by 1.8 attempts thanks to a combination of bigger bases and limited pick-off attempts per plate appearance. Players’ full talents are on display more so than they had been in the longer-form MLB games. The rules are doing exactly what baseball wanted the rules to do: Present a more exciting, fast-paced style of play in a more efficient fashion.
Stolen bases key to more exciting play
Runners are successfully stealing bases, with a 78.7 percent stolen base success rate that right now stands as the highest in the history of the league. Batting averages are up to .298, a six percent increase from last year.
MLB fans at the turnstiles and tuning in on television
Two months into the season, fans are giving resounding approval of the style of baseball at the turnstiles and the television. Average Major League attendance is up from 26,566 fans per game in 2022, to 27,267 fans per Major League contest in 2023. While another roughly 700 fans per game may not seem super significant, a deeper dive into the digits reveals that each team’s lowest fan-attended games are up by at least five percent (San Francisco Giants) and as much as 57 percent (Tampa Bay Rays). Translation? MLB has reached a higher floor for least attended games across the league in 2023, compared to 2022. Two and a half hours or so seems to be the sweet spot for bringing fans to the ballpark, and keeping them coming back.
It’s clear that even when fans aren’t coming to the ballpark, they’re turning on televisions and using apps to watch more baseball. A welcomed development for a league that has struggled to relate to a younger fan base in recent years. Through two months of the MLB season, there’s a larger appetite for America’s pastime. Right from the beginning, ESPN’s opening night broadcast of the defending World Series champion Houston Astros and Chicago White Sox was up 20 percent in viewership year over year. MLB baseball is averaging a 1.2 television rating, which is the highest for the league in a decade. And baseball on FOX has increased by 10 percent in viewership compared to this same point in the season last year.
Competitive divisions
The new rules and style of play has brought teams into contention that haven’t been a factor for the last several years. Teams like the Detroit Tigers, Anaheim Angels, San Francisco Giants, Baltimore Orioles, and Miami Marlins significantly improved this season and are in contention in their respective divisions. And as of this writing, there is less than a 10-game difference from first to last place in four of the six divisions in Major League Baseball. The more teams there are in contention, the more markets and fan bases there are that are interested in watching baseball. So again, the new rules are doing exactly what they’re intended to do so far as we head into summer and the thick of the MLB schedule.
