MLB Fans Were Polled and Their Answers are WILD...

Few weeks ago, Steven J. And Nesbbit, wonderful name by the way, Steven's great of The Athletic put out a series of polls to fans to gauge how they feel about myriad heated debates surrounding the game currently. These are done every single year. He's going to hearken back to a lot of them that were done the offseason between 22 and 23 when there was a lockout. So, we can compare and contrast where we're at as we move forward to the very likely heated debates going on around the next CBA. I had a lot of these questions. I wanted to run some of these polls myself because frankly, you know, sometimes it's hard to figure out what everyone as a whole feels about any single issue because of the way that things are presented to people. So, if I asked on a YouTube channel video or I asked here on the show or asked whatever, it's only going to be a small subset. And uh whatever process I was going to use, it was going to have to be algorithmic. And I so I'm glad someone else did it who knows how to do these things a little bit better. So these are going to be much more accurate. There was over 14,000 respondees which is quite a big sample size. We love sample sizes here. Just for reference most like political polls are like a thousand people. So this is uh pretty good. Shout out to everyone who actually answered the poll. I was one who did it too. So my answers are also in these. All right. There were three main categories and I want to hit these points because some of this stuff surprised the crap out of me and some of it was part of the course and I want to give a little bit of context as we move through them. But you know, as we know, polls are always fun. Polls are always fun to go over. So, let's just get right into it. This is what the fans think and it didn't go in the economics. The economics didn't go first in the articles, but you should read them regardless. Economics was the one I'm interested in because first, obviously, that's the CBA talk. So, I want to know how people are feeling. I want to I want to know what's going on and I want to know if I'm doing my job of explaining these things well enough because that is also something that I constantly need to be making sure I pay attention to. So, you know, it's not all just selfless. It's just sometimes I need I need to uh do something for myself. So, first question that was asked, are you in favor of a salary cap system with a cap and floor and mo 68% of people said yes and 27% said no. No opinion said five was 5%. uh in my notes I said oh come on guys didn't we talk about this but yeah that was my initial reaction I I just want to there's a caveat with this thing so now this wasn't super surprising with the super majority of people being in favor of a salary cap but I don't think it's as directly correlated with the cap floor system itself more so with wanting something to be done some it's the acknowledgement something's broken so it is a loaded question it only gives this one solution to the problem. So, everyone agrees that there is a problem, but when you only say, "Okay, are you are are you you agree with this solution to that problem?" Like, there's just a lot of people going be like, "Yeah, you know, I it could be a solution. Just do something." That's mostly probably what is going into the 60% number. So, I'm going to give people the benefit of the doubt here. Like not everyone's like we need it to be exactly like the NFL but they are saying you know the Dodgers can't just run away spend like this like this something has to be done to reduce or create deincentivize just doing it forever just because you can like that should not exist in sports and I agree 100% wholeheartedly with that sentiment and I think that's what's being reflected here you know I could be just projecting hope but I hope that We've all we all know enough about this thing. I trust human beings when given good information to make good decisions. Question number two, uh the blame for the payroll disparity between small market and big market teams belongs to mostly the owners, 57%. But there's 36% think it's also the players fault. That one kind of got me a little bit. And it it makes sense, you know, it makes sense because how are these decisions made? prices go up and they go up because they need to cover costs theoretically. Theoretically, now we don't know what that means in in real real time cuz there's a lot of ways. It's not that simple most times. Actually, it just simply isn't that simple. But players are the biggest expense by far the biggest expense a team has. So, if player salaries go up, it is logical to assume that that is causing all the prices to the on the fans to also go up. And it is more or less true, but it's not a chicken or the egg situation. We know which one we know which thing is the egg. And the egg is the revenues. Okay? When revenues go up, player salaries then follow, not the other way around. And that is an important distinction to make. So I just want to be very clear here. Um, but I I want to also say that I also fully understand to listen to like where the blame goes for a person that is just making has a more normal 9 toive job and is struggling to uh pay for certain bills and is just your your normal median household. Like it's icky. It feels gross to be like to feel like oh I'm not going to blame the people being paid millions and millions and millions of dollars for my 15 my tickets going to 80 bucks a piece. Like I I think that's completely valid. I think that that that that argument makes a lot of sense and the revenue that they provide does pay for the players, but we got to remember that the revenue is p made first. Like that's how it started and then that's it's always been lagging in that way. So if revenues for the whole league goes up, players are going to see that and say, "Okay, what's our percent percentage of revenues?" But you know, you got to do if you want to do revenue sharing, that's one way to cover it. But that has its own issues. So, uh, but but remember when we're talking about both sides, just do a thought experiment for me. Just anyone who who feels really strongly in the both area, do this thought experiment. If players today, all of them said, "Okay, the most one of the we all just agreed. They all disagreed. I'm not a player anymore." Uh, they all agreed top cap most a player can make is $500,000. And salary numbers go way down and immediately the the owners get all of that money. Do you think that prices are going to be uh proportionally dropped from there? Okay. Well, I hope you answered that question honestly cuz they won't. They'll drop them a little bit because you can't just not drop them at all because that'll hurt you more than it won't. But like they're not going to drop it the amount that they would save. That's for sure. They would definitely find a way to keep some of that in their own pockets. That is the way that this works. So, like always remember that it's kind of hard for to be both sides when one side that's the way that they run. That's how businesses are run. So, I'm just throwing that out there being the uh obviously the uh playing devil's advocate because that's all I do. Remember, I am trevmay.com. You can support everything we do here at Mayday either with a free subscription to the newsletter to keep you updated on everything we're making here. There's going to be a second possible uh newsletter that is statsbased. You'll see at the end of the show what I'm talking about, what might be there. So that might be available also always free or you can support monetarily which we appreciate a lot. We try not to read a ton of ads here especially in the video side on YouTube. If you guys see our videos you notice that there's never an ad read. People subscribing and and supporting us here on on imm.com is one of the ways that we are able to do that. Um and you get two or more bonus videos a month. If that's interesting to you go over there throw throw a supporter support or just get the free newsletter. It's great. And then also if you ever miss a show in the future, make sure you subscribe to ATM Mayday. That is our uh highlight show from this show. So all the videos will be there. So if you're not subscribed to that, what are you doing? You will never miss anything we ever make if you are subscribed to War. All right, moving forward. Do you think MLB will miss games because of a lockout in 2027? 77% of people say yes. Uh-oh. That's a big red alert. And this is a red alert to I think the PR of the game and the game of baseball. and Rob Manfred probably should be very much paying attention to this is people are are certain that there will be games missed in 2027. Now remember if there's a lockout that doesn't mean that games are going to miss automatically. Lockout would probably happen the moment the World Series is over and then there's the whole off season. There's be four months of negotiation under lockout where games wouldn't be missed. We avoided it last time with 2022 though it got close. So, it came down to the deadline and remember the vote went around and then the players got kind of blindsided with the number of of of teams that voted yes to start the season. But I myself am not as confident that games will be missed because that is the highest leverage for both sides. No, no one wants to miss out on a paycheck or revenues and missing games would could hurt the game so much that it's not worth doing. But you got to have the threat of that as leverage to get a deal done. I am confident or I'm I'm hopeful that that is what happens. But do I think there's going to be a lockout? I think 100% I think that offseason is going to be a lockout off seasonason and there's going to be very little to talk about outside of this stuff which sucks. I'm not happy about it. We're going to be doing getting pretty creative here on Mayday. I'll tell you that much. But if I'm looking at this as the leadership for both sides, we got to be very careful and smart about this and make sure that fans are taking we need to think about them. Keep thinking about the fans and what it means to them. Okay? All right. And don't just try to be like, "Come over here. Come over to my side." Literally be like, "Hey, at the end of the day, we do this for you. It needs to be at the end wherever we come out, needs to still be a good product on the field." To what degree would losing games due to lockout negatively impact your fandom significantly? Only 20%. So that's where this hope comes from, right? I think if we can avoid missing games, this number would even go down more. But even if games are missed, it might not be catastrophic. But this 47% not so great. Honestly, the not at author being 33% much higher than I thought it would be. This is a little bit more balanced than I thought it would be. Not good by any means, but better than I anticipated. So people, there's a lot more understanding. Baseball fans are pretty smart and you guys get it and you guys are pretty plugged in and you get you get complexity pretty well because you watch baseball. Baseball can get complicated very quickly. Look at this show. So, this is a testament to how smart baseball fans are. Man, I am buttering you guys up. But at the same time, that number is probably still too high. We got to make sure that no games are missed so that we can keep keep it going the way that it's going. So, this is a quote from one of the fans pulled um which I thought was pretty telling. Um how the potential lockout missing games impact my fandom is is wholly dependent on how the lockout is resolved. everything I just mentioned. If we miss games, but competitive balance issues get fixed, hopefully with massive salary floor and reasonable salary cap, sacrificing game is worth it. Now, reasonable salary cap and massive salary floor will not fix the competitive balance issues. So, I hate to tell you AJ, that is not going to get you the outcome. It's still going to be a problem and it's going to be a problem in a different way that affects more teams. So, unfortunately, but if there is a good resolution, then missing games is worth it. I think there's a lot of people that feel that way and that understanding could be very helpful for getting a good deal uh done in the long term. So, some of the stuff is par for the course. The number of people who are certain that there's a lockout coming, that was much higher than I thought it was would would be and uh kind of blew me away. But, I mean, we're we're in trouble if this thing goes too long is is basically my takeaway. Okay, moving on. Let's talk about the state of the game. This was another segment section uh talked about State of the game. How the fans feel about the state of the game. Uh, which of the following best describes your feelings? The current overall state of the MLB of MLB, sorry, sorry, of MLB. 21% are enthusiastic and 46% are hopeful. That is a really good number. That is 67%. That is more than twothirds actually exactly twothirds of people are enthusiastic or hopeful. And disappointment is is under 18%. This is even more crazy considering where it was in the ox season going uh uh into 20202. Now got to remember the last time or the other the the 2022 survey was taken literally during a lockout towards the end of it where things were getting dicey. We're getting really close to the missing games point actually. I think we had just gotten to that level when they did this poll. So t that's a big caveat that is like that is peak that is peak attention. So of course these numbers are going to reflect but this is how it's improved in that poll in 2022 it was enthusiastic was 2.8%. We 10x that uh hopeful was 24.8%. So we've doubled that. So those two numbers have drastically increased since the last time we had a lockout. That is a lot of goodwill that you'd be sacrificing. I hope we don't do it. Uh indifference was at 9.4%. It's about the same as uh uh it is now. Disappointment was at 51%. 51.6. Over half people were disappointed and 11% were upset. So I mean much better. Much better. This though this could get destroyed in one fell swoop if games are missed. So we need to not waste the fans goodwill because the fans are are overall liking what they're seeing, enjoying uh the game in a way that they hadn't in a while. That is a really good thing. Now, it's changed a lot. We're going to talk a little bit about that and some of the things that people are sad are have gone away, but uh I think there's also ways to get that stuff back, too. We're going to talk about that in just a moment. The next one, how would you rate Rob Manfred has done as an MLB commissioner? 42%. Give him a fine. He's fine. Average uh a number one on one's being bad and a number uh uh five being good. five. Only 2% of people are ecstatic with how he's done. I'll be honest, that's that's higher than I thought it would be just because of sentiment. I mean, I don't think he's done a five either. I would probably put him between a three and three and a four because I don't say it. I don't like a lot of things that Rob does. You know, he's not the best. He's not the best at communicating things. He gets very legal jargon and very kind of like he feels flippant sometimes about things that people really care about trying to make it seem not like such a big deal but he's just not that good at it. That kind of stuff, you know what, whatever. Not everyone has these skills and is really good at this stuff. Now, in his job, he probably should be, but he's not. It's it's okay. It's fine. It's it's it's whatever. But other than that, some of the things he's really tried to champion have worked. I'll say it. They're working. pitch clock's working for the most part. There's a couple clunker stuff that isn't working, but when things don't work, they change it generally. I think that they're getting more calls right. I think the umpiring is getting better. I think that some of the they're taking chances with the broadcasts and putting them in different places and doing different formats. I'm a creative person. I like creativeness. They seem open to that and he has he has pushed for that. So, got to give a little bit of credit. Now, there's other things that haven't gone well, but I would give them three and a half. But I just think that, you know, it's just like every other commissioner. Does anyone like Adele or Silver? No. There's a little bit of like if you're a fan of a sport, you're not supposed to like the commissioner that's going on. But for him to be like me, well, whatever. It's just the commissioner that makes a lot of sense to me. I I tend to give him just slightly more credit, but I'm also in this in paying attention to every little thing he says. So, I bet you didn't see that coming. That wasn't on your bingo uh bingo card for today. I thought it it was fascinating. So, but we have some numbers on how this went last time for him. uh during the 22 lockout. 77% of respondents rated Manford's performance a one or a two. So, he's also got some points. He's moved back up into the three. He's also receiving uh fewer fours and fives in 2016 than he did in 2023. So, like it's weird. Everything's moved kind of towards the middle. I don't know if that's good or not, but uh I guess it is. Let's maybe that's a slightly positive. It's kind of average. Anyway, moving on. Dodgers backto-back champs. Good or bad for baseball? 52% say bad, 32% say good, and 16% oh my god, who cares? Oh, sorry. They say no opinion. Um, in a poll conducted before the World Series, 28.4% of the participants said the Dodgers were good for baseball. Now it's 32%. So, the numbers getting up. It looks like our My Player propaganda might be helping. The Dodgers won the World Series and now it's up even more. I get it. It's the runaway spending. It's a bad look and this is bad vibes. If we're going off bad vibes, I'll throw bad 52%. I do think having a heel is a positive thing. That's what Stephven C said here in the in the piece. He said, "I think Dodgers are good for baseball because having a heel is fun." Having a team that everybody hates collectively. We all hate them together. And now like Diamondbacks fans and Giants fans should be looking around be like, "Yeah, yeah." And then Padres's fans, come on guys, we all hate them. Like that that's fun. I just I I like there being a villain. A villain is good for sport in general. That was what was so nice about the '9s and as an ESPN. There was always like a villain in every sport. And I love it when there's a villain. I think it's a positive thing. Now, how they're becoming the villain needs to be adjusted. But I think that if there are ways to rein in the spending and make sure that that stuff is taken care of and that it's an more even playing field that they will continue to be the heel, that's where the heel is the best situation. So, I think having a heel and everyone wanting them to lose and everyone gunning for them and you're always looking behind you, it just makes it so much harder to be in the top and stay on the top. I I think that's just generally a net good uh thing. But that probably is why those numbers are shifting though. I think the no should be a little bit lower, but maybe more even. But ah maybe bad should be just a little bit above good. I think the it come on all the states. Come on. But then again, I think the Kyle Tucker thing probably just whoop switched it back and just made it so it's so glaring. It's so in our face the spending that we need to take take uh take it down a notch. Now, let's talk a little bit about maybe some betting because betting betting has become a big part of the game, too. Is betting on baseball a regular part of your fan experience? This blew me away because I thought this would be like 30%. But then I realized that the average age of the baseball viewer is usually a little bit older than other sports and a little bit older people tend to be adults and uh not just go head first into gambling because that's just something that is not a very sustainable thing to do if you do it all of the time. That's that's all I'm saying. So for this number to be this low is interesting. Uh but you know it it's it's one of those things that in my just like everything else like chocolate it's fun. It's a dopamine rush. Um you know I enjoy it from time to time playing games and such. But I thought this number would be way higher just generally generally based on the people that I talk to and the people that are around my age. It is more of a more of a a part of their game. But then again maybe baseball is not the sport they do in it as much. So, if anything, this was a little bit uh positive for me because, you know, it's it's there's been people dealing with DMs on social media and, you know, the more people that do it, the more often that's going to happen. So, a little bit a little bit smaller of a number than I thought it would be. Uh, and then the next question, with the prevalence of gambling in baseball, you're worried about the integrity of game. This is this is this is concerning. 77% of people say yes, they are concerned worried about the integrity of the game. Now remember, we've had we have an ongoing investigation of Emanuel Class and Luis L Ortiz like they have been allegedly were we're throwing or were fixing small outcomes to do micro betting around their around their pitching. The number of times specifically that Emanuel Class has done has been reported that it's they're finding more and more and more and more and more and more and more times these things happen. That probably is what is affecting this number as much because that's a scandal, right? the NBA would probably have something very similar, maybe even higher because they've had some pretty big scandals. So recency bias in that is going to cause this number to go up. But that's still that said, that's still a really high number and that's something that needs to be addressed like meaningfully. I I think because at the end of the day, if no one trusts that what's happening in front of them is fair, I don't know how you come back from that. Trust is such an important part of everything, but especially sports. And it would be it would be heartbreaking to see that continue to uh erode away at people's trust of the game being played fairly and everyone having the an equal chance to win it. So if we want competitive balance, this is something we got to pay attention to. Okay, last last section is the fan experience. Let's talk a little bit about how people are feeling about their experience at a ball game. And this is also very telling too and was pretty surprising in a lot of ways. Uh the first question was, "How does your enjoyment of consuming baseball now compare to 10 years ago?" Five being more, one being less. And most people are like, "Ah, it's about average." But I I I think that there's still a a a pretty high 24% of of less is not great. It feels like 25 and 19 and 15 19 n. It's holding about steady for these people, right? like they're like, I'm getting used to it. It's different, but it it's not really affecting it one way or the other. And we're we've been trying to improve it from 10 years ago. So, maybe some of this stuff's working. Maybe this is a slight indicator that things are working and that is a positive thing. But I feel like uh some of these these people's uh concerns maybe could be addressed a little bit more. There were some people out here talking about specifically what they don't like. Like uh the most common answer was a four, but only 14.6% 6% responded with a one or two back in 2023. So like the those numbers have gone up and that is a positive thing. And 786% of fans say their enjoyment of the sport has either remained steady or gotten better. That's that's a pretty good number. Probably be a little bit better. It's something worth paying attention to but not overly concerning. But then there's some other trends that are just interesting to me as a person who creates content but also like person who also has changed how they watch baseball as well which I think is awesome. These are really cool. I think this is going to give us a good idea of what changes might be great and you guys might actually get from how the game is consumed. Uh where do you frequently follow MLB action? MLB TV is my number one thing, too. Having everything in one place is really important, especially because there's 10,000 streaming platforms and different places to watch things. No one, it's so confusing that having something that's less confusing is easier. I have a media access so I don't get blacked out from games, which is awesome. Uh but and I can't imagine what what it is like to get blackout from games. That would make I I can't tell you how frustrated I would be. But uh just seeing that cable TV has dropped considerably uh as of late. Cable TV used to be 47% now it's 29%. So it's dropped that much in 3 years and then other streamer we have the app people just follow along. Uh social media, radio, YouTube, like just highlights. That's the young fans. These are the young fans. I get these two. uh that is just like checking the scores which I think that's probably been 6% forever and then these are change these be a change in MLBTV especially with how the rights have changed has become the number one place to go but with that happening that might point us in where we need to go Rob Man has talked publicly about wanting to bring everything under the same umbrella bring all the rights to all the teams and then do revenue sharing from there honestly that happening would make the cap thing work better but it would also solve the uncertainty of revenue that is the reason that most of the owners want the cap. So now we don't have the super we don't have that argument anymore. So like it's which one do you want? And obviously there's the big teams have their own networks. They make tons of money off them and the small teams don't. So it would benefit small teams more. Big teams are like whoa why do we have to do that? They already do enough of that stuff they feel like. So that's where the headbutt comes from. But maybe just maybe bringing everything into an umbrella situation is the best way forward. It probably is longterm. I I'm just going to say it. Are you regularly impacted by blackouts in MLB games? Oh my god. 40% of people get blacked out. That is so high. That is too damn high. So, uh for 40% of people can't watch their local games, you have a problem. And I get it. Exclusivity is very important to TV to streamers. Like being the only one carrying things is important. But when there's this many different things that want ex exclus exclusivity, god, I had did it right the first time, I couldn't get the second time. Then it becomes moot. It becomes not exclusive. It becomes confusing. It becomes like, oh, we're the only ones with it. Okay, good luck telling everyone independently where it is because it's very hard to do. That needs to be cleaned up very obviously. And fans, this is one of the biggest things they hate, right guys? You all hate this. Everyone hates this. I hate it. I'm not affected by it. It drives me crazy because I want to watch a game and I want other people to be able to watch the game and I want to watch a game with people and then then we're getting blocked out. It sucks. Sucks. Uh it sucks. So maybe if we bring everything under the umbrella, we can get rid of that or at least make it a little bit easier. And then um the last question I want to cover is how many games did you attend last year? 26% of people, 3,000 people said no. None. Over half were one to five. And the general sent sentiment is the game's just too expensive to go to a lot. And that's how everything is now. It's just too expensive. The tickets are too expensive. The food's too expensive. Everything's too expensive. And there was a lot of people saying how the game's too loud and and and you can't talk to your family when you're sitting there. You can't take in a game. But you got to remember, we live in an attention economy. Energy and speed is the name of the game. More people like that than don't. the the days of going to a baseball game and having it feel like you're going to a a local park and sitting there and just people watching except instead of them just walking around walking with their dogs and blowing bubbles and stuff, they're playing baseball. That doesn't exist. That's the miners barely because we have a pitch clock. The game's 2 and 1/2 hours long. No matter what, no matter how long you hope it is. I go to Mariners games up here, guys. They're pitching so good. They give a one run every game. The game's literally 2 hours to 10 minutes every single time. If I'm not there from the opening pitch sitting down, I'm going to I'm not going to I'm not going to be able to watch it until the fourth inning because it's we're it's just the fourth every single time cuz they're pitching so good. So like people want to take their kids, they want to make it worth it. There's this difference between how much it cost to go and how long you get to be there. It's like would you people people liking it to like would you pay this much money to go to a movie? Even though movies are getting up there, not quite for just a 2-hour experience. Baseball used to be an all day event, not a oh, what else can we do today now that the game's over in five minutes? That's what the the those people with zero and people with one to five are saying. And uh I tend to agree with that a little bit. So maybe there's something to be done there. But I want to know what you guys think.

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