Posted by: John S Kiernan

Each October, brisk autumn days at the ballpark begin to give way to hot-stove winters, and America’s national pastime adds another season to the record books with a World Series. It’s been that way since 1903. Sure, some things have changed. Everyone’s a lot richer. Games are played under the lights, often into the early hours of the morning. And TV cameras are pitching all the action, plus a lot of ads, to viewers worldwide. But the bases are still 90 feet apart. The pitcher’ mound is still 60 feet, six inches away from home plate. And there’s no shortage of intrigue and excitement surrounding this year’s matchup, as the Los Angeles Dodgers square off against the Houston Astros in the 113th World Series.

So as we wait for the boys of summer to play ball in the Fall Classic, why not take a closer look at everything that makes the World Series such a special event? WalletHub crunched the numbers to find the most interesting facts and figures related to this year’s Series, which you can check out below, followed by an Ask the Experts discussion with picks and commentary on the business of baseball.

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Embed on your website<a href="http://ift.tt/2yKzphf; <img src="//d2e70e9yced57e.cloudfront.net/wallethub/posts/28013/the-112th-world-series-by-the-numbers-v7r.jpg" width="" height="" alt="The-112th-World-Series-By-The-Numbers-v7R" /> </a> <div style="width:px;font-size:12px;color:#888;">Source: <a href="http://ift.tt/2yQVKvO; Ask TheExperts: Major League Bucks

Excitement is running high right now, but how healthy is the business of baseball, and what does the future hold for its stature as America’s pastime? We asked those questions and more to a panel of esteemed sports business experts, and their responses figure to make for some interesting reading as the World Series cedes to the Hot Stove and, ultimately, a brand new season.

1. How is the business of baseball doing? What trends/issues do you expect to be most important on the corporate side of things over the next 5-10 years?
2. How has playoff baseball fared against encroaching college and professional football schedules, in terms of television ratings and overall fan engagement? What kind of ratings do you expect for this year’s World Series?
3. Does the MLB playoff format need further changes?
4. Do you still consider baseball to be the national pastime?
5. Who is going to win?

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• Jeffrey S. Moorad Adjunct Professor in the Anderson School of Management at UCLA, Chairman of Morgan Lewis’s Global Sports Industry Initiative, Principal of Morgan Lewis Consulting LLC and Chairman and CEO of Moorad Sports Partners
• Richard Megraw Associate Professor in the Department of American Studies at the University of Alabama
• Fred W. Sington Assistant Director of Athletic Communications and Marketing at Delta State University
• Richard Strockbine Athletics Director at the University of Dallas
• Daniel Makagon Professor and Program Chair of Communication Studies in the College of Communication at DePaul University
• Pete Schroeder Associate Professor of Health, Exercise, and Sport Sciences at the University of the Pacific

Jeffrey S. Moorad Adjunct Professor in the Anderson School of Management at UCLA, Chairman of Morgan Lewis’s Global Sports Industry Initiative, Principal of Morgan Lewis Consulting LLC and Chairman and CEO of Moorad Sports Partners How is the business of baseball doing? What trends/issues do you expect to be most important on the corporate side of things over the next 5-10 years? The game is smoking hot, aided by an amazing postseason, with the final four clubs from the four largest markets. The NFL’s challenges of late have created greater opportunity for baseball. How has playoff baseball fared against encroaching college and professional football schedules, in terms of television ratings and overall fan engagement? What kind of ratings do you expect for this year’s World Series? The World Series would have been more highly rated if the Yankees had won, but Houston and the dodgers will be a hot TV series. Does the MLB playoff format need further changes? Doesn’t appear in need of much tinkering. Do you still consider baseball to be the national pastime? The CEO of a major sports apparel brand told me recently that their most recent data suggests MLB is the most popular sport, with basketball next, and NFL dropping to 3rd. Seems like the national pastime to me. What type of economic impact do you expect for the host cities? Significant -- tickets are hot in both cities, with brokers receiving top dollar -- a large stadium, media capital like Los Angeles will always spike the economics. Who do you think is going to win? Houston. Richard Megraw Associate Professor in the Department of American Studies at the University of Alabama How has playoff baseball fared against encroaching college and professional football schedules, in terms of television ratings and overall fan engagement? What kind of ratings do you expect for this year’s World Series? I have not encountered any data on this year’s ratings in comparison to other sporting events, although this series should get fairly good ratings, seeing how two of the nation’s four cities are represented. I’m assuming that carrying those two major markets should make for halfway decent numbers. Does the MLB playoff format need further changes? Yes, the format needs change. Baseball has always been built around the best-two-out-of-three series, not one game winner-take-all, like football. I know: another tier of playoffs, and the series will end around Thanksgiving. So, let’s try this: instead of the nine-innings play in game, let’s go with a two-game series. The team with the best record hosts both games, but only has to win one. Other than that, my only suggestion is for some kind of structure that would keep the New York Yankees out of the playoffs. Forever. Do you still consider baseball to be the national pastime? Football has long supplanted baseball as the national pastime; however, given football’s present difficulties -- the head trauma issue, especially -- its days may well be numbered. What type of economic impact do you expect for the host cities? I suspect a significant economic impact on both host cities, but I’m accustomed to this phenomenon because I teach at the University of Alabama, where a home football game translates to something like a 15-16-million-dollar boost to the local economy. Who do you think is going to win? You can build a very strong case for both of those teams -- the Dodgers in a short series, the Astros if it goes six or seven. Four total starts from Dallas Keuchel, and Justin Verlander should lengthen the odds in the Astros’ favor. Fred W. Sington Assistant Director of Athletic Communications and Marketing at Delta State University How is the business of baseball doing? What trends/issues do you expect to be most important on the corporate side of things over the next 5-10 years? I think the business of baseball is doing great. MLB needs to work on time of game, which they are trying to do. The fan experience is getting more involved everyday with several nice new ballparks and renovations happening. Ballpark amenities are getting better each year. MLB needs to keep the fans of all monetary levels in mind to keep filling parks. How has playoff baseball fared against encroaching college and professional football schedules, in terms of television ratings and overall fan engagement? What kind of ratings do you expect for this year’s World Series? The schedule has not affected much. I think the baseball purists will watch baseball and keep a close eye on football, and the reverse for football fans. I think this year’s ratings will be up, because you have a team that has not been to the series in a while, and a team that has never made the series. Does the MLB playoff format need further changes? No. Too many additional teams can water down the quality of games in earlier rounds. But money talks. Do you still consider baseball to be the national pastime? Yes. What type of economic impact do you expect for the host cities? It will be a major impact no matter how many games, but a six or seven game series doubles the impact. Who do you think is going to win? Toss up, but Astros are due. Richard Strockbine Athletics Director at the University of Dallas How has playoff baseball fared against encroaching college and professional football schedules, in terms of television ratings and overall fan engagement? What kind of ratings do you expect for this year’s World Series? I think the baseball TV ratings will do a bit better than in recent years due to Los Angeles being in the series, and will pick up some people who are fed up with the NFL. Does the MLB playoff format need further changes? Baseball needs to add two teams, go to 4, 8 team divisions and eliminate the wild card. Do you still consider baseball to be the national pastime? When baseball was clearly the national pastime, soccer didn’t exist in this country, the NHL had six teams, the NBA had 12 teams, the Lakers were in Minneapolis and the NFL had not yet reached the stature it now has. It will always have a place, but not the prominence it once had. Previously, if you were a kid that wanted to play sports, Little League was your option. Now, the first-choice option appears to be soccer with all the team sports having youth options. Who do you think is going to win? I don’t think Houston has the pitching depth, so I guess it’s the Dodgers. Daniel Makagon Professor and Program Chair of Communication Studies in the College of Communication at DePaul University How is the business of baseball doing? What trends/issues do you expect to be most important on the corporate side of things over the next 5-10 years? TV contracts are stronger than ever. Attendance remains strong in most markets. The major issue MLB will face, like all sports leagues, is maintaining competitive balance while not pricing themselves out of the markets they have built. That is, if TV contracts are high, those costs are ultimately passed to consumers via fees on satellite and cable bills. Chord cutting seems attractive, until one realizes that the cost for each app, plus the cost for fast Internet starts to add up. Does the MLB playoff format need further changes? The current playoff format does not need to change. Some journalists have argued for a longer wild card format. The season is already long, and it makes no sense to reward two teams that couldn't win their divisions with more playoff baseball. The current format is exciting and works well. Adding more rounds would bloat the playoffs, as we see with NHL and NBA. Do you still consider baseball to be the national pastime? I don't think there is one national pastime. The media landscape has changed, and the demographics of the nation have changed. Both have altered how fans engage different sports. Plus, other entertainment options have increased in quantity, quality, and availability. We see shifts in popularity of different sports (NBA for a while, now NFL, but international soccer is attractive for young people), which says that one sport is not dominant. What type of economic impact do you expect for the host cities? Professional sports teams put those cities in national conversations every day. Newspaper, television, radio, Internet, and social media coverage of the teams puts the cities on an entertainment map. And sports provide an opportunity for locals and tourists to participate in another entertainment option in the respective cities. Research seems to be mixed about the direct economic advantages of professional sports. Cities using public funds to build stadia or to keep mobile franchises probably doesn't make sense. But the media attention helps solidify that these are entertainment destinations and major markets. Who do you think is going to win? Dodgers in 6. Pete Schroeder Associate Professor of Health, Exercise, and Sport Sciences at the University of the Pacific How is the business of baseball doing? What trends/issues do you expect to be most important on the corporate side of things over the next 5-10 years? Baseball business is very good. I think the MLB posted something like $9 billion in revenue in 2016. Depending on the market, team revenue ranged from $500 to $200 million, with the large market teams like the Dodgers and Yankees at the top. Future issues -- baseball has done very well with digital technology. They are better at getting content to their fans in multiple platforms than any other professional league. They have led the way on this. I think developing the global market is also something that will come up with MLB. The tough thing is that the markets with great interest in baseball are not First World economies. And those that do have First World economies, like Japan and Korea, already have strong professional leagues. Can they generate interest in places like China, India and Europe? I’m not sure. Will the Latin countries become more than feeder programs for the MLB? The instability of the global economy makes it hard to predict. How has playoff baseball fared against encroaching college and professional football schedules, in terms of television ratings and overall fan engagement? What kind of ratings do you expect for this year’s World Series? I think baseball still lags here. Even regular season professional football games get better ratings than the World Series. Part of it is fantasy sports-related, and part of it is that baseball fans seem more connected to their local teams than to the overall league. I do think that having two large market teams in the Dodgers and the Astros will increase ratings, but it will be nowhere close to NFL ratings, unless there is a game seven which tends to captivate sports fans. Does the MLB playoff format need further changes? No, I think the current format is probably fine. The current format gives more teams a chance in the playoffs, which is good for interest since more fans will stay connected to baseball in the fall, when football season opens. However, if even more teams were to join the playoffs, it runs the risk of being oversaturated and extending the season even longer. I don’t think Americans want to watch baseball in November. They are ready for baseball to be done in October. Do you still consider baseball to be the national pastime? No, I think that football is clearly the national pastime. The ratings, even though they are down a bit, are still phenomenal. With fantasy football, fans are linked more to multiple teams and the limited number of games makes each Sunday seem so important. Out here, the Raiders just played what the media were calling a “must-win game” in October. In baseball, there would never be a must-win game so early in the season. Despite football’s prominence, baseball has a solid place in the sports landscape and it is obviously a very profitable league. It also has more international appeal and is safer, so I do not see it as being in decline, and in fact may be in a stronger position long-term than football. What type of economic impact do you expect for the host cities? Moderate. The World Series does not generate the amount of new spending from sports tourists the way the Super Bowl or a Final Hour does. The people that go are going to be local fans. They might spend a bit more, but there is no influx of outsiders that come with a transient mega event. Some extra media, some traveling fans, but not a major economic bump for Houston or Los Angeles. Who do you think is going to win? You guess is as good as mine, but I hope Houston wins, just for the psychological impact on the Houston community. Having a team win the World Series would be a nice distraction for the city after the flooding from Harvey. It would give the city something positive to rally around.

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