In a March 1 letter to fans, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said the league has sought “timely implementation of sorely needed rules like the pitch timer and elimination of shifts to improve the entertainment value of the game on the field.”
A prolonged shutdown carries risks for a league with a more fragile fan base than existed in the 1990s. Marginal fans may drop off, according to Andrew Zimbalist, an economics professor at Smith College who has consulted in sports industries.
“The question is how many such people will there be?” Zimbalist asked. “A thousand? A hundred thousand? A couple million? We don’t know yet.”
Attendance fell to 68.5 million fans in 2019, the lowest since at least 2006. The last two years, of course, have been a struggle for all live events. In 2021, with ticket sales limited by Covid-19, baseball drew an in-person audience of 45.3 million. TV viewership rebounded last year, with the World Series on Fox up 20% to almost 12 million viewers. Still, that was well below the recent peak of 23.4 million in 2016.
In Manfred’s letter to fans, the commissioner called the 1994 strike “a painful chapter in our game’s history.” Play began that season with contract talks underway and ended with a strike shutting the game down.
“We cannot risk such an outcome again for our fans and our sport,” Manfred wrote. “The clubs and our owners fully understand just how important it is to our millions of fans that we get the game on the field as soon as possible.”
Costas, the longtime sports anchor, thinks a lockout that lasts just a week or two into the season won’t be as disastrous as the one that canceled the World Series in 1994.
“The last time they missed games, they missed the most important games,” he said.
But Smaltz, the Phillies fan, said the Covid shutdown taught him something.
“What I realized is not watching sports didn’t affect me as much as I thought,” he said. “Now, it’s ‘I’ll check the box scores and the highlights.’ I don’t have to see every pitch.”
—With assistance from Gerry Smith.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.