Thursday, July 14, 2016

Summer Bummer: MLB All-Star Game TV Ratings Tank

The Major League Baseball All-Star Game seemed to suffer from a lack of buzz this year.

Though it was the last all-star outing for retiring Boston Red Sox slugger David Ortiz, and despite little else going on in the sports world to steal attention, Tuesday night’s game fell to record-low viewership.

According to MediaLife, The contest averaged 8.71 million total viewers, according to Nielsen, off 20 percent from last year’s 10.9 million.

Among adults 18-49, the game averaged a 2.2 rating, losing 29 percent of last year’s audience.

In fact, NBC’s “America’s Got Talent” beat the All-Star Game on both counts. That means more people tuned in to watch Simon Cowell than Salvador Perez.

The network was quick to point out that the MLB game remains the top-rated all-star game among the four major leagues (MLB, NHL, NFL and NBA) and that the broadcast was its top-rated show of the summer.

That’s true, but it’s hard not to wonder why interest in the game, and some would argue baseball generally, has fallen.

Up until 1995, the All-Star Game drew 20 million-plus viewers regularly. The strike hurt viewership, and the game’s move to Fox, which two decades ago had significantly lower ratings, didn’t help.

And, of course, viewership for nearly everything has fallen in recent years. The game hasn’t drawn more than 11.3 million viewers in five years.

But others would argue there’s something more at play here than just the ratings declines seen across all of television in recent years.

Youth baseball participation declined 4.3 percent from 2009 to 2014, according to the Sports & Fitness Industry Association, and some argue that the game is just too slow for today’s young people. In a sport like soccer, you can be involved in every play. Baseball rarely involves more than two or three people per play.

Certainly the sport is more popular with older people. Nielsen Scarborough says people over 55 are 11 percent more likely than the average person to like baseball.

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