Sports must be competitive in design. However, competition between various sports is rarely seen, especially in public forums. LeBron James’ comments about the NBA owning Christmas seem to have opened the can of worms.
After James’ comments, former Heisman Trophy winner and NFL QB Cam Newton dissed Major League Baseball and its dying popularity.
Death of baseball? Cam Newton seems to think so.
Appearing on the fourth and first podcasts, Newton deleted several controversial comments. This isn’t as good as it gets when it comes to baseball. He called MLB a “dying sport” and believed it would decline within 20 years.
“Baseball, I hate to say it, but it’s like a dying sport. “I think baseball will overtake the WNBA in 20 years,” he said.
With less than a week left in 2024, it seems like the buzzer beater for Worst Take of the Year has sounded. pic.twitter.com/xcEsop61if
— Jared Carrabis (@Jared_Carrabis) December 26, 2024
The WNBA has seen a surge in popularity recently. Thanks to an electric collegiate scene and a popular 2024 rookie class led by Caitlin Clark, the league has seen record attendance and viewership.
However, the gap in viewership ratings between the WNBA and MLB was enormous. While the basketball league’s finals averaged over 1.5 million viewers, the World Series had over 7 million regular viewers.
And when it comes to attendance, those numbers aren’t even close. While the WNBA’s stadium attendance has averaged record numbers of less than 10,000, baseball games have averaged attendance of more than 30,000.
At the same time, the finances of the two leagues are miles apart. While the WNBA struggles to find adequate salaries for its players, baseball regularly sees contracts in the hundreds of millions of dollars range.
Ultimately, while the idea is noble, imagining a scenario in which baseball is taken over by the WNBA feels like a monumental task. Eventually, the league began to show an upward trajectory as it continued to embrace rule changes to improve the product for viewers.
The WNBA has a ton of goodwill, and rightfully so. Scaling the heights of MLB will be a difficult hill to climb for the foreseeable future. Twenty years later, there is still little chance that Newton’s prediction will come true.
