It’s possible there are multiple influences at play here. I’m certainly not disagreeing with you, I’m also of the opinion that baseball is deeply uninteresting to watch. I can understand how someone could be into it (much as with any other hobby), I just personally find it only marginally less dull than a seminar on comparative accounting practices (read: a great deal less dull than cricket).
I think a big part of it is the diversity of entertainment. If your interests don’t align with what baseball offers, it’s no longer a problem to find something else to occupy your time with. You’re not trapped into a paradigm with five or six sports to choose from, each with a limited season, and many of these new ones you can also engage with (gaming, drone racing, CTFs, competitive nerf battles, etc.) which gives you an appreciation for the game that is missing from most professional sports. Basketball and Football both are still quite popular with the younger generations, and both are physically very integrated into american culture. Streetball is about the most accessible sport out there, and every school in the country has a football field (and you can play touch or flag football games in any park)
I suspect it’s the same reason non-american Football (soccer) has maintained such popularity: there is almost no barrier to engagement, even at a non-professional level (you just need a ball and a couple piles of sweatshirts) and more formal infrastructure for it is incredibly common to find. Whereas baseball, tennis, jai alai, golf etc. are all unsafe to play in a public setting where there’s a risk of an unaware bystander getting beaned by a small hard ball going 200mph, and require safety equipment that raises the barrier to entry by quite a bit (nets, mainly). They still have traction, but if you’re a kid in a shitty suburb or poor town, you’re far more likely to be able to play soccer/football/basketball than you are baseball, and will be able to relate more intimately with those games when watching them played.
(And that’s not to mention esports)
When we’ve got so many choices and so little time to ourselves, why spend it on something we have to compromise our way into enjoying?
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
One of those ways that people have choices is with multiple competing soccer leagues, is there not? That may explain in and of itself why it does better. Of course, that’s a chicken and egg thing with how much the market can sustain, but there’s no one to keep MLB or the NFL in check. The NFL, I understand, does have a similar generational problem, but that could also be attributed to CTE findings.
Warl0k3@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
Sure, and I imagine that’s a big part of it too. From what I understand all professional sports are having difficulties gaining traction with the Gen Z demographic, but baseball is especially hard-hit (their recent rule changes to try and increase the pace of games may have done something to help with this, I haven’t seen any data about it).
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
And they’re all doing the same nonsense with making it annoying to watch. I’m not asserting that I’m definitely right or anything. I haven’t done anything resembling actual analysis of the trend. Intuitively though, given my own experiences with the prospect of following a sport I enjoy or not, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was just the leagues offering poor value to a demographic that hasn’t been locked in to the sport yet.
Warl0k3@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
Sure, and I’m not disagreeing that being able to engage with professional sports at all is a big factor. I think there’s more at play here than just that.