It was 11:45 p.m. Monday when the buzzer sounded, and Villanova had won its second NCAA basketball championship in three years. Our kids, who had asked to stay up to watch the game, but were flatly denied, may find solace in the fact it was a double-digit blowout.
But two years ago, it was just after 11:30 p.m. when Kris Jenkins hit a three-pointer at the buzzer to give Villanova its previous championship. I had fallen asleep in my Wisconsin hotel room during that game and woke up to the announcer signing off from this “instant classic,” which no one will forget. Of course, almost no kids on the East Coast will remember that game, either, since the jumper happened half an hour before midnight on a school night.
The games ended so late because they started so late: 9:20 p.m. was the tipoff time Monday night. This isn’t just an NCAA basketball thing, either.
The Houston Astros’ Alex Bregman hit a walk-off RBI single in Game 5 of the 2017 World Series, and that happened at 1:17 a.m. Eastern on a Sunday Night/Monday Morning. Even in Houston, that’s 12:17 a.m. on a school night.
It was a relatively humane 10:30 p.m on a Sunday when LeBron James blocked Andre Iguadola’s layup from behind in Game 7 of the 2016 NBA championship. When Malcolm Butler intercepted Russell Wilson’s touchdown pass to clinch Super Bowl XLIX, it was a mere 10 p.m. Eastern on a Sunday, making that the most watchable championship moment in pro sports or top-level college sports this decade.
The problem here isn’t my own difficulty staying up. (My wife woke me up for the fourth quarter of the Cavaliers-Warriors Game 7.) It’s about the kids.
When baseball playoff games mostly start after 8 pm (the New York Mets’ first two playoff games of my children’s life both started after 9 pm), and tend to last past midnight, it’s simply not realistic to let an 8-year-old or even an 11-year-old to stay up for them, especially on a school night. And because the MLB playoffs last for weeks (which in itself is wonderful), it’s certainly not sustainable.
So, why do Major League Baseball, the NBA, and the NCAA do this? Ad dollars and the West Coast are the reasons. A 9:20 tipoff for the NCAA championship ensures that the broadcast starts in prime time across the entire continental U.S. This maximizes advertising revenue.
Can we begrudge these industries their revenue maximization? Sure we can, and the market will punish these sports, too, in the long run.
First of all, they are supposed to be serving their customers, not exploiting them. Recent trends in professional sports have shown that ruthless efforts to squeeze every last dollar out of every last game often backfire.
The NFL lost 10 percent of its viewers from 2016 to 2017. That’s the second-straight drop. NFL viewership numbers haven’t climbed on average in 7 years. Everyone’s got their explanations, but certainly the ruthless profit maximization is a cause here. The Redskins’ leaning on local government to create a parking monopoly for owner Dan Snyder is a perfect example of how to alienate fans by nickel-and-diming them. The NFL expanded to two Monday Night games on opening weekend. Then to Thursday Night (?!) Football. Over the years, viewers got tired and dropped out. Eventually, grabbing for every last buck turns off the customers.
With baseball and basketball starting their games so late, the obvious locus of decline will be the youth — the would-be future viewers.
More than three-fourths of the U.S. population lives in the Central and Eastern Time Zones. As fewer and fewer kids get to watch the most important games, fewer and fewer kids will grow attached to the sports, especially as spectators. When they’re old enough to stay up (and before, like me, they are too old to stay up), fewer of them will love the game or the teams enough to forgo sleep, or hanging out, or video games. It will not have been a part of their life in their most formative years.
The average age of a baseball viewer is 57 years and rising. Far more upsetting, the number of kids playing baseball has dropped precipitously in the past decade. From 2000 to 2013, the number of kids playing baseball fell almost by half. Again, there are plenty of reasons for this (including the pernicious move towards professionalizing youth sports and shifting towards “travel teams”), but surely, the too-late games don’t help either.
Even youth basketball is losing players at significant rates, with more than a 5 percent drop from 2007 to 2014. The average NCAA basketball viewer is 8 years older today than he was in 2000. This is a bad trend. The NBA, on the other hand, has seen only a 2-year climb in that stat.
NBC and CBS may not care, but the caretakers of the sport — the baseball and basketball executives — should care. By opting for short-term profit maximization over cultivating young fans, the leagues are selling their seed corn.
There are some modest fixes that won’t sink the ship or exclude the West Coast. Sunday and Saturday games can start much earlier, like 4 p.m. Eastern, because nobody’s coming home from work. The NCAA championship ought to start at least one hour earlier than it does now.
Lest we forget, sports are a game. Games are mostly for kids. If we ignore that, tomorrow’s adults won’t tune in, either.
