Strides made in attracting younger fans, ticket buyers
PHILADELPHIA » Bryce Harper wants to get to Cooperstown.
Sure, what baseball player, especially a twotime NL MVP such as Harper, doesn't dream of induction into the Hall of Fame. But Harper's hopes extend well beyond a call to the Hall — the Philadelphia Phillies slugger would love for Major League Baseball to stick one of its yearly attraction games — akin to recent “Field of Dreams” and London trips — in Cooperstown, New York, as part of Hall of Fame weekend.
“I think it's pretty cool being able to play in different areas and different countries,” Harper said. “The next one we were all talking about would be a Hall of Fame Game . ... I grew up playing in Cooperstown, at Cooperstown Dreams Park. That was the travel ball place to go, kind of like Williamsport. It's a little bit of a different level than Williamsport, but it's pretty cool.”
Harper and the Phillies hit Williamsport, Pennsylvania, today to play the Washington Nationals in the annual Major League Baseball Little League Classic at 2,366-seat Historic Bowman Field. The field is just a 6-mile trip from the complex where the Little League World Series is underway with kids full of big league dreams, many of whom will attend the game ready to mingle with today's stars and — perhaps like Harper did — find their way from one of youth baseball's biggest summer stages to MLB.
The Classic and games like it are part of MLB's outreach efforts to draw more fans, preferably ones closer in age to 21-year-old stars such as Jordan Walker and Elly De La Cruz.
MLB says the efforts are working: Ticket-buyers are younger, more teens are watching the game (yes, on old-fashioned TV), social media accounts such as Jomboy Media generate big-traffic numbers with kids looking for snappy highlight breakdowns, and an education on the game's greats comes on a deep dive from a few hours playing MLB: The Show.
Baseball has boosted efforts to reverse declines in participation among underprivileged communities and among young Black players, and has vowed to diversify the game from the grassroots level to the highest levels of team and league decision makers.
Hall of Famer Ken Griffey Jr. has served MLB as a youth ambassador and hosted Division I baseball players from HBCUs around this season's AllStar game. Other programs across the country aimed to increase and diversify the sport's reach such as the MLB Youth Academy, DREAM Series and the Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI) program.
Tony Reagins, a former scout and GM of the Angels, has been tasked with bumping those numbers in his role as MLB's chief baseball development officer. He's pledged to build participation at all levels and has found recent signs of growth encouraging.
“Once they have that connection and positive experience with the sport, the chances of them becoming a fan are greatly enhanced,” he said.
Baseball's biggest hits these days are the numbers found on TikTok and YouTube that have ballooned the sport to a wider audience. With kids these days holding the attention span of a home run trot, Major League Baseball introduced a slate of rules designed to speed the pace of play, notably with the introduction of the pitch clock. The average time of game this season is 2 hours, 38 minutes, trimmed from 3:03 last season and 3:10 in 2021.
MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said the median age of ticket-buyers this season has dipped to 43 years old, which is down from 46 last year and 49 years old in 2021.
MLB says national and local TV viewership for teens ages 12-17 is up 11% from last year and noted that 86% of people ages 18-24 and 25-34 said they are more likely to watch MLB games due to the rules changes.
Reagins said the shift in how young people watch baseball — more in short bursts — has forced the league to adjust at all levels in how it attracts new fans.
“The important part is that they are consuming the game,” he said.
Nationals first baseman Dominic Smith, a graduate of Gardena's Serra High, wishes he could take more than a day trip to the Little League World Series. The 28-year-old Smith is the co-founder of a nonprofit, the Baseball Generations Foundation, that helps provide resources for underprivileged youth involved in the sport. He played in the Little League Classic previously with the Mets and said it's important for kids to discover that major leaguers are just like them.
“Those couple hours that we get to spend with them, I think they'll have a better understanding on how we're regular human beings, how we have probably the same common interests,” Smith said. “It makes them more hungry, makes them want to work harder so they can get up here and be in our shoes.”