While baseball is often referred to as “America’s favorite pastime”, American football has long surpassed baseball as the nation’s favorite sport to watch. For several reasons, including first and foremost its better suitability for television, football flew by baseball in the 1960s and hasn’t looked back since. In recent years, baseball has even been surpassed by basketball, as younger audiences prefer the action-packed, star-studded NBA over what many young viewers consider the dragging affair of a three-hour baseball game.
As the following chart shows, baseball does in fact have a problem reaching younger audiences, which may become a problem for the Major League Baseball in the not-too-distant future. According to Statista Consumer Insights, 64 percent of U.S. sports fans aged 55 to 64 follow baseball, while just 43 percent of thoses aged 25 to 34 and 34 percent of 18 to 24-year-olds do the same. While American football is still the clear number 1 among sports fans above the age of 25, basketball has surpassed it in popularity among 18 to 24-year-olds.
