MLB Is Chasing the World While Losing the Fans at Home

The Cardinal Chronicle
St. Louis, MO
By Ray Mileur

MLB Is Chasing the World While Losing the Fans at Home

Baseball once lived on every radio and television in America. Today, loyal fans are struggling just to find the game.

Not long ago, a woman reached out to me with what should have been a simple question.

Her father is ninety years old. He has followed the St. Louis Cardinals his entire life. Through transistor radios, black-and-white television, and generations of ballplayers who came and went, Cardinals baseball has always been part of the rhythm of summer.

Her question was straightforward.

“How can my dad in Southern Illinois watch the Cardinals this season?”

What should have been a simple answer… wasn’t simple at all.

Today, following a baseball team requires navigating a maze of blackout restrictions, regional sports networks, streaming subscriptions, and platform exclusivity deals. Depending on where you live, you may need cable, a streaming package, or a specific app. Sometimes more than one.

And sometimes, even after paying for all of it, the game is still blacked out.

For younger fans who grew up with streaming services, it’s frustrating.

For a ninety-year-old lifelong fan, it’s nearly impossible.

Commissioner Rob Manfred frequently talks about “growing the game,” and Major League Baseball has aggressively pursued new international markets—from London to Seoul to Mexico City. Expansion itself isn’t the problem. Baseball has always had a global reach.

The problem is what’s happening here at home.

While MLB searches for new audiences overseas, the league has made it harder than ever for loyal American fans to simply watch their local team. Regional sports network disputes, blackout rules, exclusive streaming contracts, and scattered broadcast platforms have turned what was once the most accessible sport in America into one of the most complicated.

In chasing new revenue streams abroad, Major League Baseball risks overlooking the fans who carried the game for generations.

For decades, baseball was the easiest sport in the country to follow. You turned on the radio or flipped on the television, and there it was—summer unfolding one inning at a time.

No blackout maps.
No subscription tiers.
No login screens.

Just baseball.

Today that simple connection is fading, replaced by confusion and frustration. And the people being pushed away are often the most loyal supporters the game has ever known—the retirees who never missed a game, the families who built their evenings around first pitch, the lifelong fans who passed their love of baseball down to the next generation.

The ninety-year-old Cardinals fan who now needs a technology consultant just to watch the team he has loved for a lifetime.

Baseball doesn’t have a marketing problem.

It has a connection problem.

The game was built in American living rooms and on American radios. It grew because it was always there—steady, familiar, part of everyday life.

If Major League Baseball forgets that, no amount of international expansion will replace what it loses at home.

And when a ninety-year-old Cardinals fan can’t figure out how to watch his own team, that should be a warning sign to everyone in the commissioner’s office.

Because baseball didn’t become America’s pastime because it was complicated.

It became America’s pastime because it was always there.

 
The Cardinal Chronicle
Preserving the Past, Promoting the Present, and Projecting the Future