Amid a Resurgence, Baseball's Ambitions Are Boundless

Major League Baseball enters its 2025 season with the winds of change firmly at its back after two straight years of increased attendance, TV viewership, and media visibility. More than 71.3 million fans went to MLB games in 2024, an 11% increase over 2022. Viewership at home is way up as well: Fox’s 2024 World Series broadcast averaged 15.8 million viewers, the highest since 2017. ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball notched its biggest average audience since 2019, and MLB.tv had its most-watched game ever on Opening Day 2024. Analytics firm Playfly Sports has MLB and the NFL even on the percentage of viewers under 44 (51%). The 2025 season will start with a two-game Tokyo Series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Chicago Cubs on March 18-19. It will be the biggest standalone international event the league has ever put on, and mark MLB’s return to Japan after six years with several home-grown superstars on both teams. And if you really want proof that it’s a new era in baseball, New York Yankees players are finally allowed to have facial hair again for the 2025 season after a 49-year ban. “We feel like we do have real momentum,” Commissioner of Baseball Rob Manfred told ADWEEK. “You’re going to have really captivating events, opportunities to see baseball in a slightly different light, so a lot of excitement ahead for our fans.” Faster, farther, more At the root of this success are some relatively subtle tweaks to how baseball is played, designed to make games brisk and more entertaining. In 2023, the league made four rule changes: implementing a pitch clock to speed up at-bats, slightly enlarging the bases, ending a fielding tactic called the shift, and limiting pickoff attempts by pitchers. Adding the pitch clock has made games more dynamic. Their combined effect has exceeded expectations. The average game time decreased to just over 2.5 hours, the shortest since 1985. Average score per game is up. And most notably, players stole the most bases since 1915. “The most important thing about the combination of changes is that it’s made the pace of the game better,” Manfred said. “There’s more action in a shorter period of time, there’s been a greater emphasis on the athleticism of our players, and all of those are things that fans told us they wanted to see from the game.” Brands have also taken notice, with sponsorship revenue up 55% since 2022 to $1.9 billion, according to sports and entertainment intelligence platform SponsorUnited. Deal volume is up 9% over 2023, with over 30 categories represented among the more than 325 new sponsorship deals struck by teams and the league in 2024. Jersey patches, which were introduced just two years ago, brought in $204 million in 2024, a 59% year-over-year increase. And baseball’s evolution is continuing in 2025. Longtime sponsor T-Mobile is riding a wave of excitement as its 5G network powers MLB’s automated ball-strike system, which allows players in the majors to challenge the home plate umpire for the first time (though only in spring training for now). “It’s really quick, really accurate, and so far the feedback has been really positive from the players,” Manfred said. “We think that technology is outstanding, and the use of technology is another thing that’s appealing to our fans.” NEW SPONSORS 2023: Booking.com, FanDuel, Sage, SeatGeek, Zoom 2024: New York Life, Primo Brands, BlueForge Alliance, NFP, Strauss, WM 2025: Ito-En, Konami, Japan Airlines Growing the game Rule changes are not the only reason the sport is seeing new momentum. Manfred’s first official act after being elected commissioner in 2014 was to attend the Little League World Series to make a point: His tenure would center on reviving and sustaining interest in the sport among young people. That goal became Play Ball, a program that sounds simple—get more kids to play and keep playing baseball—but whose influence has changed the face of the sport. Play Ball ranges from tee-ball sessions for preschoolers to building the infrastructure for baseball in Latin America, and creating a more direct and equitable pipeline for players to reach the Major League. The success of this 10-year effort shows in both ticket sales—since 2019, the median age of MLB ticket buyers has decreased by five years to 46, while sales to fans ages 18-35 are up 8.5%—and team sport participation. According to the Sports and Fitness Industry Association, 17.3 million Americans play baseball on an organized team, making it the most played sport in the U.S. “Play Ball is really fundamental to our future,” Manfred said. “Everything we do is based on research, and the best way to make a fan is to get a child to play.” That investment in youth participation has paid off not just in how many kids are playing, but who is picking up a bat and ball and sticking with it: “Particularly because of our investment in underserved areas, we’ve started to see more diversity at the top of our draft,” Manfred noted. These changes are reshaping the fanbase, too. The Hispanic audience for baseball across broadcast networks rose by 18% between 2023 and 2024. And MLB is speaking to them, most notably with 2024’s “El Béisbol es Otra Cosa” campaign starring SNL’s Marcello Hernandez and Puerto Rican rapper Myke Towers, alongside the league’s deep roster of Latino talent. The league also signed on TelevisaUnivision as a multi-year broadcast partner in 2024, making it the first over-the-air Spanish-language network to air a World Series game. “You always want to be where the audience you're seeking is,” Manfred said. “And so we make sure that we're language-specific, that we are on platforms like Televisa so that we continue to make inroads into the Hispanic community.” Ballpark attendance is up 11% in the last two years. Ending the blackout The league is working on addressing one of fans’ longtime frustrations: blackouts of local games, which account for 82% of fan viewership over the course of the season, according to Playfly Sports. Last month, New York Mets broadcaster SNY became the latest regional sports network to make home games available live to local fans through a streaming option created with MLB. So far, 22 of the 30 Major League teams offer local fans a way to watch home games without a cable subscription. To end blackouts for more teams, the league will have to acquire local media rights when its deals with Fox, TNT Sports and TBS expire in 2028. “It’s a series of undertakings, but I hope before our national negotiations in 2028, we will have an alternative digitally for fans so no matter where they are, they’ll be able to watch their team,” Manfred said. Despite a 6% rise in viewership for Sunday Night Baseball in 2024, ESPN opted out of its broadcast deal with the league last month, reportedly over rights fees. (The network will air the 2025 season as planned. ESPN did not respond to a request for comment.) “We’ve had a lot of outreach from outstanding media companies that are interested in the ESPN package,” Manfred said. “From our perspective, we want a partner or partners on that package that improves our reach so that we’re getting to the broadest possible audience. "It’s important for us to have partners who are excited about having baseball and see baseball as a priority.” Fans at the 2024 Seoul Series, MLB’s first trip to South Korea. Seeking out new fans hort of turning back the clock to put a baseball in more kids’ hands, the surest way to make new fans is to bring the game to them. This August, MLB is taking baseball to the Bristol Motor Speedway in Tennessee, a state that’s never hosted a Major League baseball game. On Aug. 2, the NASCAR stock cars will make way for the Atlanta Braves and Cincinnati Reds amid a fan festival featuring themed food and country music. It will be the fifth time a Major League game is hosted in a state without an MLB team, and part of the league’s strategy to win new fans by integrating baseball and culture—as well as finding ways to reinvent the game day experience. Baseball’s itinerant nature also draws in fans who are travelers, with many following around their teams or making bucket lists of ballparks to visit. Booking.com became MLB’s official online travel partner in 2023 based on the insight that 49% of baseball fans planned to travel to at least one MLB game during the season, with 61% willing to travel 500 miles or more. “There’s a reason baseball is known as America’s favorite pastime—it’s a cultural touchstone with multi-generational appeal that continues to see growth in popularity,” said Ben Harrell, managing director of the U.S. at Booking.com. “This sponsorship allows us to tap into a beloved tradition and strengthen the connection between baseball and the excitement of travel.” MLB started playing regular season games internationally in 1996, when the San Diego Padres played the New York Mets in Mexico. But the number and pace of international road trips has accelerated under Manfred’s leadership. Between 1996 and 2015, the league played eight international series, mostly in Tokyo. In the last 10 years, teams have played 10 series in Japan, Mexico, and two cities for the first time: Seoul, South Korea and London. “We see London as a stepping stone to Europe,” Manfred said. A planned 2025 game in Paris was scrapped for lack of a suitable venue and promoter. MLB is working on another London Series in 2026. “We made a real investment there in an effort to gain a foothold on the European continent, and we’ll continue to do that.” The MLB played two games in London for the first time in 2024. Closer to home, “Mexico presents a dual opportunity for us,” he added, developing both the baseball audience there and closer relationships with Mexican professional leagues, which could bring more Mexican players to the U.S. and help grow the domestic Hispanic audience. And baseball is also setting its sights on the domain of cricket. “Our developing market strategy is really focused on India right now,” Manfred said. “The kind of similarity in bat-and-ball sports, we think, makes it a natural for us going forward.” AN OPENING DAY FOR THE RECORD BOOKS Major League Baseball has played games in Japan six times since 2000, but the Tokyo Series kicking off the 2025 regular season is unprecedented in Japanese starpower—and brand interest. The 2025 Tokyo Series presented by Guggenheim will feature World Series winners the Los Angeles Dodgers, led by pitching-hitting double threat Shohei Ohtani, alongside pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto and 2025 rookie sensation Roki Sasaki. They’ll be facing off against the Chicago Cubs with its own megastars, pitcher Shota Imanaga and outfielder Seiya Suzuki, in a two-game series at the Tokyo Dome on March 18-19. The excitement has also attracted 23 brand partners, the most ever for an MLB series, including: Ito-En as the MLB’s first official green tea; bottles will be on the podiums at press conferences during the Tokyo Series, a la Gatorade in the U.S. Gaming giant Konami, a new global sponsor, has created an MLB version of the most popular baseball mobile game in Asia, Professional Baseball Spirits A. Mastercard has been an MLB sponsor for over 25 years, but for the first time it’s secured sponsor rights abroad. Japan Airlines is the new official airline of the MLB, both in Japan and the U.S. SCSK, an IT support company, recently acquired Net One and will feature both companies’ logos on batting helmets during the Tokyo Series. While Japan has long had a healthy interest in MLB games, it’s difficult to overstate the impact of the current class of Japanese stars. Over the past two seasons, MLB ballparks have seen a 218% jump in advertising from 35 Japanese brands, according to SponsorUnited. Average regular season viewership of MLB games in Japan increased 42% in 2024 alone, and reached 12.1 million for the 2024 World Series.

Sports Marketing News

Amid a Resurgence, Baseball's Ambitions Are Boundless

Commissioner Rob Manfred on how Major League Baseball is thinking bigger and going new places

Subscribe to keep reading

$20

MONTHLY DIGITAL

$17

ANNUAL DIGITAL

$21

ANNUAL DIGITAL & PRINT

Eva Kis

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications