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Why Is Baseball Declining

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Game Over: America’s Decline of Interest in Baseball Do you find baseball interesting? More and more people are losing interest in it every year. Baseball has gone from “America’s Pastime” to a fading image of its former self. It is a long way off from completely disappearing, but it feels like most people nowadays find baseball boring and unexciting. Interest in baseball is declining because kids aren’t playing it, people find it boring, and other sports are competing with its popularity. It used to be that every boy grew up with the dream of playing baseball for their favorite team. Not anymore. According to the Sports and Fitness Industry Association (SFIA) participation in youth baseball has dropped from 5.3 million in 2008 to 4.5 million …show more content…

Kids that grow up in low income households that make $50k a year or less are half as likely to play sports. Simply put, families that live in low income households can’t afford to pay for their child’s equipment or fees ("7 Charts that Show the State of Youth Sports in the US and why it Matters"). It’s especially hard to pay for your child to play sports if you are a single parent. 95% of division 1 college baseball players have grown up in a family with both biological parents. This is at a time where only 46% of Americans have grown up in this setting …show more content…

Baseball was America’s favorite sport for a long time, but recently there is a new contender. According to a poll on Bloomberg Politics, football is now America’s most popular sport. 67% of the respondents said that football was their favorite sport while only 28% stated baseball ("Football has officially take over from baseball as America's favorite pastime"). So with sports like football taking the national spotlight, baseball seems to be pushed aside, almost forgotten about. Football isn’t finished there, Super LI had 172 million U.S. viewers (“List of Super Bowl TV ratings”). Game 7 of the World Series only saw 40 million. ("World Series television ratings"). The top five least viewed World Series have all been since 2008 ("World Series television ratings"). While the top five most viewed super bowls have all been since 2008 ("List of Super Bowl TV ratings"). This shows that Americans are more interested in other sports finals than baseball. So with the rising interest in other sports, especially football, interest in baseball is declining even more. Baseball can’t compete anymore. Not only are these new sports taking away young, talented players from baseball, they are taking away their

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