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Random thoughts from the house bound:

When I was a kid NBA and NHL ended in early May and football started in mid September.  MLB playoffs were over by mid October just as College & NFL season got into full swing.

Over 50 years MLB has been encroached from both directions so that instead of 100 days of being about the only game in town - it is down to about 30days from mid-June until the All-Star break.  The playoffs go head to head against NFL and college football and feel less and less relevant each year.

I think there is a chance the NBA will rethink it's long held start of its season from late October until mid-December and push its playoffs back into July and wrap up about the time NFL starts preseason.  Effectively they would not lose about 1/3 of their season to NFL in October to mid December.  In the process they swallow up the last period that MLB had the calendar to itself.

Will MLB be able to withstand being a 2nd banana almost 100% of the time on a daily basis?  I am not so sure.  There is some irony in that gambling may prove to be a savior for the sport. 

Baseball may become far more entertaining to younger people that can wager for 3 hours on the outcome of each at-bat, inning or performance of single players.  How popular would Trout become when he has 8-1 odds he will homer against Garret Cole and then does? The betting permutations on baseball are endless. 

Picture a screen where the odds of a batter getting a hit change with each pitch and that is all 1/2 the audience is paying attention to - the betting box in the lower left corner of the screen replacing the score/hit/error box.  Make the odds 2-5 for.  When Draft Kings wins the rights to gambling and pays more to the sport than ESPN or Fox - do not be surprised.  

Pete Rose will reemerge as the spokesperson for the gambling site and make more money in one year than he did in his whole career.  May even open the HOF to him as attitude on gambling softens. 

It is a brave new world and I have too much time on my hands.....be well.

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This is pretty tame stuff.  LuvBB, aren't you the guy who was advocating for stuff like 2 strikes and you're out before the current situation arose?  I'm surprised you're not pushing to allow baserunners to tackle infielders, or for every other baserunner to run clockwise around the bases in order to set up cool collisions on the basepaths.

 

I  know sports wants to open to gambling but historically not much good have come from sports gambling, see rose or the black sox scandal.

Gambling will always be prone to be involved in game fixing.

In soccer and tennis gambling has caused fixed matches, corruption and even threating of players as recently as the last decade.

Gambling is entertaining and I used to do some of it myself but it will always attract crime and corruption.

JCG - different topic.  The rules changes I'd advocate would be designed to liven up the game to create more action and address Go44Dad's observation which I agree with wholeheartedly.

This topic is more around the game finding itself as having to compete every single day of the season with something else potentially more popular.  

Gambling is coming - all the people that own sports teams are not going to leave billions of dollars on the table.  If you think they are then you haven't been paying attention.  The question isn't if gambling will occur, but how much it will dominate telecasts.  The proliferation of gambling shows on TV tells us where this is going;  There will be subscription services for advice, web sites to make it easy and as the TV itself becomes more interactive you'll be doing it from your living room by talking to your TV....think Siri.

Younger people will view baseball differently as a gambling vehicle rather than for the game itself.  The NFL's popularity is rooted on three things IMO, Explosive action, perfectly designed for commercial TV and its wonderful ability to gamble that completely blew up with the invention of Fantasy Football.  Even the scoring system lends itself to gambling with easy to understand point spreads.  

Either way if the NBA actually makes a bold move to alter its season to attack the wide open summer it won't be long before mid - June to mid - August is viewed as NBA playoff time as it becomes the sport of Summer and assumes the position of the calendar Ying to the NFL's Yang.  Hell I can see a time where the NBA's final game is August 10th and the first of 2 or 3 NFL preseason games is a few days later.  And that is in 2021 or 2022.

Are you guys aware that MLB does better in TV ratings than the NBA?

 

For the full 2019 season, MLB RSN games averaged a 2.86 rating and NBA games averaged a 2.3 rating per game for the 2018-19 season. This means that MLB games rated 24 percent higher than NBA games, before accounting for the fact that a) There are twice as many games in MLB, and b) MLB games last on average about 50 minutes longer, meaning more advertising inventory.

 

https://www.thebiglead.com/pos...the-nba-01dwa6f4r11s

 

There are 17 markets that have both an MLB and NBA team. MLB outrates NBA in 14 of 17 and wins by an average of 107% across all 17 markets.

 

Market by market 2018 up to the all-star break:

Bay Area Market
Warriors 8.87
Giants 3.91
Athletics 0.75

Cleveland Market
Cavaliers 8.21
Indians 6.69

Boston Market
Red Sox 6.55
Celtics 3.65

Milwaukee Market
Brewers 5.51
Bucks 2.30

Minneapolis Market
Twins 4.85
Timberwolves 2.60

Chicago Market
Cubs 4.63
Bulls 2.12
White Sox 0.79

Houston Market
Astros 4.35
Rockets 1.60

New York City Market
Yankees 4.14
Mets 2.62
Knicks 2.52
Nets 0.42

Philadelphia Market
Phillies 3.54
Sixers 2.50

Denver Market
Rockies 3.36
Nuggets 0.64

Atlanta Market
Braves 3.29
Hawks 0.58

Phoenix Market
Diamondbacks 3.20
Suns 0.64

Detroit Market
Tigers 3.02
Pistons 1.63

Washington D.C. Market
Nationals 2.90
Wizards 1.52

Miami Market
Heat 2.70
Marlins 1.16

Dallas/Ft. Worth Market
Rangers 2.12
Mavericks 0.74

Los Angeles Market
Dodgers 1.87
Angels 1.83
Lakers 1.82
Clippers 0.58

Nba regular season is super boring. Like half the teams make the playoffs and the other half tries to tank, even the last playoff teams don't really want to be there because the 8th seed only has like a 10% chance to beat the 1st seed in the first round.

Nba finals and semi finals is great but everything before that is as boring as spring training to me. 

Imo the playoffs in nba are too bloated, if the results were a little more random the RS would be a little more exiting. 

But as it is the RS and the first playoff rounds are just a very long warm up for the top teams 

 

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