Baseball Ignores Customers at its Peril

Baseball – once America’s national sport – is sadly falling prey to the same flawed, internally-focused strategy driving so many once-proud US companies into failure. For example, let's look at how baseball's leaders are deciding on start times for games, especially during the crtical post season. Here’s the dilemma: advertisers pay more for night games during prime time; consumers, not surprisingly, like earlier games (especially children and even parents who have to work the next day).

What to do? Apparently Major League Baseball’s leaders are opting for short-term gains from selling lucrative prime time air rights – even though they are sure to continue losing an entire generation of fans. Who can enjoyably watch a World Series game when the opening pitch isn’t even thrown until 8:40pm eastern time?

How ironic that Major League Baseball recently commissioned a group of leading business thinkers to reflect on ways they could ramp up enthusiasm for the sport, especially among young people. Ideas were bounced around about ways to make the game more enjoyable for these young fans, including shooting t-shirts out of handheld bazookas, playing louder music, and incorporating noise-making devices and other entertainment.

Here’s a novel idea. How about giving kids what they really want: drug free heroes and shorter games during times they are awake to watch them.