Baseball vs. Football: Which is the True American Pastime?

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now big business in sports today with television networks paying large amounts of money to secure the right to broadcast sporting events. The Super Bowl (which is the championship game in the NFL) is consistently the highest rated broadcast every year, which allows the lucky network to charge ungodly amounts of money in advertising. The NFL and MLB both enjoy large television contracts although their revenue sharing plans are quite different. The NFL currently receives 2.2 billion dollars a year in television revenue, which amounts to 73 million per year per team. MLB currently receives 340 million dollars per year in television revenue, which is divided up among the teams in a formula so complicated that you need understand quantum-physics and theoretical mathematics just to gain a rudimentary understanding of the distribution structure. These numbers are interesting in that there are less football teams to televise which means that the NFL must garner obscene ratings to demand that much money. Baseball games are on almost every night on a variety of different channels and ratings can be considered dismal when placed in comparison to the NFL. I believe the main reason for the ratings difference is season length. The NFL season is so short and every game means so much that the drama level is much higher when compared to the daily rhythm of 162 baseball games where losing one or two games a week is not considered disastrous. If a NFL team were to lose 5 games in a row chances are they would not make the playoffs however if a MLB team loses 5 games in a row they may still win it all.

How much does it cost to see a professional football or baseball game? Ticket prices vary but the average ticket price in 200 for a NFL contest was $54.14 with the highest average ticket price being $74.28 to see the Washington Redskins (Washington, D.C.) and the lowest average ticket price...