Why are there so many one-day games in the early MLB playoffs? “The numbers don’t lie”

What’s with all these daily playoff games?

Sentimentalists nostalgic for bygone eras of Major League Baseball certainly love them. For fans on the West Coast, however, Tuesday’s first playoff game comes early: Game 2 of the Wild Card round between the Detroit Tigers and Houston Astros is scheduled for 11:30 a.m.

Meanwhile, fans in Houston, where the game is actually being played, will watch the contest at 1:30 p.m. local time if they’re not too busy at work or school.

So why doesn’t the commissioner’s office start the games later? Couldn’t more fans watch this way, even if the start times are closer together?

“Believe me, this is a debate I’ve been involved in on all sides over the years,” said Noah Garden, MLB’s deputy commissioner for business and media, who oversees MLB’s television decisions. “But the numbers don’t lie. And ultimately, they have to be used. Good news for all these debates: talking to me is more fun and it’s interesting. It’s great fun. But there is empirical evidence here.”

Garden and executives from MLB’s offseason television partners, including ESPN and Fox, all pointed to the same goal: maximizing viewership. Evidence has shown that the best way to achieve this is to minimize overlap between games.

“With this, if you want, you can watch as many games as you want and not have to choose,” said Ashley O’Connor, vice president of programming and acquisitions at ESPN, which offers wild-card games across its worldwide channels, including ABC and ESPN2 . “People really want to be able to see as much as possible.”

Some degree of overlap will always be inevitable, especially early in the postseason when there are so many teams in the race. Still, after one game ends, MLB typically sees viewership of another ongoing game skyrocket.

“There are more fans than you realize who want to watch multiple games, and when you’re trying to reach as many fans as possible, the overlap makes it difficult to reach,” Garden said. “It’s not like we never overlapped. So you look at the numbers and you say that when you do that, that’s what you’re sacrificing: you’re sacrificing broader reach, in a sense.

MLB has the final say on game dates, but the process is done in cooperation with television partners who pay high fees for broadcast rights. After ESPN’s Wild Card round, TBS has American League teams in the Division Series and League Championship Series, while Fox (and FS1) has the National League for those rounds, as well as the World Series.

Bill Wanger, Fox Sports’ executive vice president and head of programming and scheduling, said the process is both an art and a science.

“Things like this are talked about a few weeks before the season, when we already know who will be present after the season,” Wanger said. “One example is surrounding the games we have with the strongest companion software we can.

“NLCS Game 1. We have been working with baseball to get it on Sunday, October 13, in prime time and (probably) it will air on Fox and we will have an NFL doubleheader at the top…featuring Dallas and football in Detroit. We’ve been working on things like this in baseball for months.

However, some decisions are naturally made at the last minute. O’Connor said ESPN’s wild-card scheduling discussions have been intense over the past two weeks as the matchups have become clearer.

On Tuesday, the first day of the postseason, the vice presidential debate at 9 p.m. ET extended the game time even further. The Kansas City Royals and Baltimore Orioles started their game at 4 p.m. EST, rather than 4:30 p.m. as scheduled for Wednesday. However, the New York Mets and Milwaukee Brewers will start their game at 5:30 p.m. ET, not the 7:30 p.m. time they have on Wednesday.

Some issues still persist even though the wild card round is underway.

“There will be four No. 1 matches on Saturday, October 5,” Wanger said. “We’re talking to baseball about, OK, well, Fox will have two games and Turner. What will be the order? Where will we place the right teams? Things like the time zone in which games are played are taken into account. Of course, if you’re on the West Coast like the Dodgers, you’ll want to go there later in the day.

And yes, the elephant in the room – the size of the market, the size of the fan base – also matters.

“Definitely a factor,” Wanger said.

“When you talk about reach, the size of your market can certainly impact the number of fans you reach,” Garden said. “Market sizing is difficult because some of these famous franchises have huge numbers of displaced fans. So it’s not always like, “Hey, because you’re from New York, you’re always going to get a certain time slot.” There are other bands that have a larger fan base than you might think, especially from a national perspective.

Reaching the maximum number of spectators is not a goal that was born solely from the desire to spread baseball fun on a wide scale. Ultimately, television networks have airtime they can sell to advertisers, and the ability to reach a specific audience helps in this effort.

“Let’s get to the other side of the business side: That’s the last thing our media partners want, they don’t want overlap,” Garden said. “They want to have the best chance of playing a game and a time slot that can attract the most baseball fans at one time.”

However, Garden admitted there is an ongoing “debate” about start times, and principals say they are indeed discussing among themselves.

“We have very healthy debates internally at ESPN about what everyone’s perspective is and what that looks like, and we also have the same healthy debates about baseball,” O’Connor said. “Times are changing. Are we still operating in line with the expectations of the 2024 audience and not even programming with the 2022 audience in mind? If we don’t keep looking at it, I think we’re doing a disservice.

Corporate partners will always try to speak well of each other, but sometimes misunderstandings and scheduling misunderstandings, or at least disappointments, occur. Patrick Crakes, today a media consultant, was a longtime Fox executive. He recalled that in one of his last seasons on the network, probably in 2015, MLB wanted the Chicago Cubs to consistently appear in prime time, which was frustrating for Fox because Fox was leading the league that year American.

“Baseball made the decision to prioritize history and there was no stopping them, but it broke some protocol,” Crakes said. “Baseball tries to structure its schedule in a way that takes into account the terms its partners have negotiated in their contracts, but it also tries to do what’s best for baseball, which is usually what’s best for the majority of fans.”

From the fans’ point of view, no one scenario will please everyone. Some fans will probably always look for a way to watch games during the workday. Of course, not everyone works a 9-to-5 anyway. But Lee Berke, a media consultant, said the ability to stream games to phones makes daytime gaming more accessible.

ESPN won’t tell you if you don’t.

“I’m glad that ESPN is distributing our networks, that you can continue to enjoy this content from the comfort of your desk,” O’Connor said. “Whether or not your boss knows about this is a matter between you and your boss, but I won’t go into that.”

(Top photo of Truist Park cameraman: David J. Griffin /Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)