It's a week until MLB Opening Day, and I got to speak with the Commissioner of Baseball about heading into 2025 with ballpark attendance up 11% and sponsorship revenue up 55%, pretty wild numbers that have a pretty cool story behind them. Play ball!
⚾️ The March issue of ADWEEK is here. ⚾️
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.
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.