Sports

Why does MLB’s early playoff slate include so many day games? ‘Numbers don’t lie’

What about all the daytime playoff games?

Sentimentalists who long for a bygone era of Major League Baseball certainly love it. But for fans living on the West Coast, the first playoff game comes pretty early on Tuesday: Game 2 in the Wild Card round between the Detroit Tigers and the Houston Astros is scheduled for 11:30 a.m.

Meanwhile, fans in Houston, where the game actually takes place, will tune into the match at 1:30 PM local time – if they’re not too busy at work or school.

So why doesn’t the commissioner’s office just start the games later? Wouldn’t more fans be able to watch like this, even if all the start times are closer together?

“Believe me, this is a debate I have participated in on all sides over the last few years,” said Noah Garden, MLB’s deputy commissioner for business and media, who oversees MLB’s television decisions. “But the numbers don’t lie. And in the end you have to use them a little. The good news for all these debates: it’s water cooler, talk to me, and it’s interesting. It’s fun. But there is empirical evidence.”

Garden and executives at MLB’s postseason broadcast partners, including ESPN and Fox, all pointed to the same goal: maximizing viewership. And the evidence has shown them that the best way to do that is to minimize the overlap in games played.

“So if you want, you can watch as many games as you want and not have to choose,” said Ashley O’Connor, vice president of programming and acquisitions for ESPN, which distributes the Wild Card games. its channels, including ABC and ESPN2. “People want to be able to watch as much as possible.”

Some degree of overlap will always be inevitable, especially this early in the postseason with so many teams in the running. But when a game ends, MLB will typically find that viewership for another game in progress will increase.

“There are more fans than people realize who want to watch multiple games, and if you’re trying to reach the most fans, that overlap takes away from reach,” Garden said. “It’s not that we’ve never overlapped. And so you look at the numbers, and you think, if you do it, you’re sacrificing that: you’re kind of sacrificing the broader reach.

MLB has the final say on game times, but the process works with its TV partners, who pay handsome rights fees. After the ESPN-hosted Wild Card round, TBS has the American League teams for the Division Series and League Championship Series, while Fox (and FS1) has the National League for those rounds, as well as the World Series.


A TV camera at Camden Yards. (Jerry Driendl/Getty Images)

Bill Wanger, executive vice president at Fox Sports and head of programming and planning, said the process is as much art as it is science.

“These kinds of things are discussed weeks in advance, once you have an idea of ​​who’s going to be in the postseason,” Wanger said. “An example of that is surrounding the games we have with the strongest accompanying programming we can.

“NLCS Game 1, we’ve been working with baseball to get that into primetime on Sunday, Oct. 13, and that will (probably) be on Fox, and we’ll have an NFL doubleheader leading into … with Dallas and Detroit football. Those kinds of things are what we have been working on in baseball for months.”

However, some decisions obviously come down to the last minute. Discussions about ESPN’s Wild Card schedule have been intense over the past two weeks as the matchups became clearer, O’Connor said.

On Tuesday, the first day of the postseason, a vice presidential debate at 9 p.m. further extended game times. The Kansas City Royals and Baltimore Orioles kicked off at 4:00 PM ET, instead of the 4:30 PM time slot they are scheduled to play on Wednesday. And the New York Mets and Milwaukee Brewers started at 5:30 PM ET, instead of the 7:30 PM slot they have on Wednesday.

Some issues are still ongoing even with the Wild Card round underway.

“There will be four Game 1s on Saturday, Oct. 5,” Wanger said. “We’re talking to baseball about, ‘Okay, Fox is going to play two games, and Turner is going to play two games, what’s the order going to be? Where are we going to place the respective teams?’ And things are taken into account, such as the time zone where the games are played. Obviously, if you’re in a West Coast location like the Dodgers’, you’re going to want to go later in the day.

And yes, the elephant in the room – market size, how big the fan base is – matters too.

“Definitely one of the factors,” Wanger said.

“When you talk about reach, the size of your market can certainly be a factor in how many fans you reach,” Garden said. “Market size is tricky because some of these legendary franchises have a huge amount of displaced fans. So it’s not always about, “Hey, because you’re from New York, you always get that certain time slot.” There are other teams with fan bases that are bigger than you think, especially from a national perspective.”

Reaching the maximum number of viewers is not a goal derived solely from the desire to spread baseball joy far and wide. Ultimately, the TV networks have airtime that they can sell to advertisers, and the ability to reach specific audiences helps with that.

“Just on the business side of things: that’s the last thing our media partners want, they don’t want any overlap,” Garden said. “They want the biggest opportunity for the game that they have and the time slot that can attract the most baseball fans at once.”

But Garden acknowledged a “debate” over start times, and executives said they are going back and forth among themselves.

“Internally within ESPN, we have very healthy debates about what everyone’s position is and what that looks like, and we have those same healthy debates with baseball as well,” O’Connor said. “Times are changing. Are we still trading on what the 2024 audience is looking for, and not even programming back to the 2022 audience? If we don’t look at it all the time, I think we’re doing a disservice.”

Business partners will always try to speak well of each other, but there are occasional fuss and disagreements about planning, or at least disappointments. Patrick Crakes, now a media consultant, was a longtime executive at Fox. He recalled that in one of his last seasons with the network, probably 2015, MLB wanted the Chicago Cubs consistently in primetime, which was frustrating for Fox because Fox carried the American League that year.

“Baseball decided to prioritize the story, and nothing stopped them, but it did break a protocol,” Crakes said. “Baseball is trying to organize their schedule to meet what their partners have negotiated in the contracts, but also trying to do what’s best for baseball, which is generally best for the majority of fans.”

From a fan perspective, no scenario will ever please everyone. Some fans will probably never stop looking for a way to watch games during their workdays. Of course, not everyone works 9 to 5 anyway. But Lee Berke, a media consultant, said the ability to stream games on phones makes games more accessible during the day.

ESPN won’t tell if you don’t.

“The fun of how ESPN distributes our networks means you can still consume that content while you’re at your desk,” O’Connor said. “Whether your boss knows is a matter between you and your boss, but I won’t go into that.”

(Top photo of a cameraman at Truist Park: David J. Griffin /Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

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