The 2013 Major League Baseball season is over with the Boston Red Sox winning the World Championship. This capped their 3rd championship in the last 10 years. It would seem that that the days of the Curse of the Bambino are over. Present for all 3 championship runs, is the irreplaceable David Ortiz. He has meant so much to the Boston Red Sox and the city of Boston and truly represents Boston Strong. Congratulations to the Boston Red Sox and the city of Boston.
Also coming to a conclusion is the 2013 fantasy baseball season. The season saw Mike Trout and Miguel Cabrera battle it out for the MVP in fantasy baseball and the emergence of Yasiel Puig. It also brings to a close a season where fantasy baseball is dwarfed by the fantasy football. According to the Fantasy Trade Sports Association, the NFL is preferred 77% to the MLB 33% in participation.
We ask ourselves: Why is the fantasy sports game so much more dominant in football than it is for baseball? So below we look a couple of reasons why it is so as well as a suggestion for a change to baseball that can make fantasy baseball more competitive to fantasy football.
Fantasy Baseball and Baseball are not complimentary
The most popular competition form of fantasy baseball is the rotisserie format where team owners players statistics are gathered across multiple categories. And then those categories are ranked against other team owners players. Points are awarded according to first to last rank in the league to determine the standings and the championship. The explanation of rotisserie fantasy baseball game to the average person would make it difficult to understand. However, the principals of baseball are quite simple. There is batter and he is pitched a ball to hit and runs around the bases to score.
In fantasy football, the most popular competition form is head to head. Whomever scores the most points against an opponent wins that week. Every week you play a different opponent. Win-Loss record determines playoffs and then the champion. Head to head is an easier game to understand and play.
It would seem that fantasy baseball and baseball are almost two independent entities. The rotisserie system doesn't really resemble on the field action of what happens in a baseball game. That makes watching the game of baseball not really necessary if a player plays fantasy baseball. In addition, because of the number and chaotic timing schedule of baseball, marrying the cadence of fantasy baseball and baseball is difficult. Although daily schedules may favor the die hard fans, it is difficult for the main stream fans to keep up with the pace. Not making baseball and fantasy baseball complimentary in this regard limits the popularity of the fantasy baseball.
Fantasy football doesn't have this issue. Every week there are games. There is a Thursday night and Monday night game, however the majority of actions happens on Sunday. That makes the schedule and cadence easier in football and thus makes it easier to play and watch. It is also easier to translate what happens on the field to what happens in fantasy world. If a player rushes for 20 yards or scores a touchdown, that is easily translates to the fantasy score.
Fantasy baseball does have head to head format that is available for leagues. However, the game still tracks performance on several categories and scores are based on head to head with team owners competing with other teams. This improves the scoring however lacks the simplicity of football's one week-one head to head game model.
Football is more popular than Baseball
The National Football League is the biggest sport in America. The NFL makes the most money, the league gets paid the most in advertising dollars, and every year the Super Bowl leads all television programs in viewers and not just in sports viewers, but all viewers everywhere.
Plainly stated, the NFL is more popular than Major League Baseball. Case in point, when baseball was showcasing their premier championship teams between the Red Sox and Cardinals, the MLB was competing with regular season NFL games. Although, baseball won the ratings head to head, the ratings were relatively comparable:
Monday, October 21, 2013
- MLB - Game 1 World Series: 14.4 million viewers on Fox
- NFL - Monday Night Football, Vikings vs Giants: 13.2 million on ESPN
- NFL - Sunday Night Football, Vikings vs. Packers: 16.8 million on NBC
- MLB - Game 4 World Series: 15.9 million viewers on Fox
- MLB - Game 5 World Series: 14 million viewers on Fox
- NFL - Monday Nigh Football, Seahawks vs. Rams: 11 million on ESPN
So the NFL has an advantage with their fantasy fanbase over the fantasy baseball fanbase. It is easier for fans of a game to start playing the complimentary fantasy game then having to convert a fan from another sport. One of the things that the MLB can do is gain popularity against the NFL. That would provide a boost to its fantasy baseball game. I know that is easier said than done.
Fixing the schedule to improve fantasy baseball
In order to help make fantasy baseball more popular is to make the fantasy game easier to play. A way to make the game easier to play is to normalize the schedule for baseball.
Normalize means to bring some sort of structure to the weekly baseball schedule. Currently, teams sometimes plays 6 games sometimes 7. Teams may play 3 game series, sometimes 4 game series for division games, sometimes 2 game series. Because of this variance, it is no surprise that they only way to sculpt a fantasy baseball game is to rely on a category system to try to normalize the scoring. And as we stated category scoring adds a complexity layer to fantasy baseball.
What if there was a cap to the number of games a team plays a week? Imagine baseball having a cap of 6 totals games a week In addition, series are composed as a 3 game series. Thus, teams play two series per week. One could be away and one could be home.
That places a cap on the number of games fantasy players are allowed to play a week. Thus that would make scoring easier for totaling runs, RBIs, stolen bases, HRs, etc. You would be able to get rid of the over the 162 games played per position issue in managing in rotisserie format. Statistics could be scored for each day and thus would appease the die hard players. However, with the 3 game series, statistic could be accumulated for the 3 game stretch to help reduce the time and effort to have to manage the team.
The structured 6 games a week could also help align television broadcasting and timing of when games are on. Monday Night Football and Sunday Night Football are exceptional marketing tools as everyone knows when to tune in to football. The day off from baseball could also benefit fantasy baseball as well. It could be used to as an official start of the week for fantasy baseball. This would allow owners to manage their teams and setup their lineups. It would also help sync media such as sports fantasy programming and fantasy content promotion during that time.
One thing to consider is that this could reduce the number of games played per team by 5-7 games a season, however that could be mitigated by when the season starts and ends.
Summary
We aren't saying that there are no other issues in baseball to address, however fixing the predictability of schedule for baseball to make the game of fantasy baseball easier to play would be the first start. Making the game easier to understand and play brings more fans into the fantasy baseball and thus bring more fans to baseball.
