*By Conor White*
With Major League Baseball's postseason just one week away, fans are gearing up for an October full of exciting moments and unforgettable finishes. But the league is scrambling to attract more viewers ー and younger ones, at that.
"We've got to do a better job of having some games in the afternoon in the postseason," Ron Darling, MLB analyst for TBS, said Tuesday in an interview on Cheddar, "so our younger viewers who come home from school can watch games like I did when I was a young kid."
According to the Sports Business Journal, Major League Baseball has the second-oldest fan in pro sports with an average age of 57. Only the PGA Tour can claim an older demographic.
Darling is very familiar with the rigors of the postseason ー he helped the New York Mets win the World Series back in 1986. But the game has changed quite a bit since then, and so has the broader landscape.
In addition to football, basketball, hockey, and soccer, baseball now has another sport vying for fans' attention.
"Esports has just become so popular, so quickly," the former pitcher said. "The way they do things are things that baseball and other sports should've thought of years and years ago."
But the rise of esports may not be all bad, Darling said.
"I think what esports is going to do for the major sports, it's going to make them ー and demand of themー that they change all of the old thinking," he said.
MLB certainly isn't shunning advancements in technology, though. In fact, the league was one of the first to stream games to consumers via MLB.TV, and MLB Advanced Media is considered the gold-standard for sports streaming. The league has also struck deals to stream games via Twitter ($TWTR) and Facebook ($FB), and Darling expects to see more of those partnerships in the future.
"I think at some point, instead of one of the major networks, you might have one of the \[social\] media outlets doing more and more games," he said.
For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/prelude-to-a-fall-classic).
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The basketball superstar took over Cheddar's Slack channel to tell the team to "BE NICE" and "TAKE MONDAY OFF."
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After signing a $154 million contract with the L.A. Lakers, some are wondering if the basketball legend has some ulterior motives in moving to the West Coast. “I think he’s primarily going to become a dominant producing force and maybe becomes an Oprah-type person, who launches his own channel,” Sean O’Connell, managing editor at Cinemablend tells Cheddar.
Russia's shocking win over Spain in the Round of 16 got the team one step closer to its first ever World Cup championship. But while there's still a lot of game left to be played, The Banter's Jeffrey Marcus says, regardless of the outcome, President Vladimir Putin has already achieved his goal.
While many soccer fans will be tuning into the round of 16 starting this weekend, some are still not over the ultimate loss — the United States not participating. However, Jeffery Marcus, publisher at the Banter, tells Cheddar he thinks that for the U.S. to have a solid chance at a 2022 World Cup, it's a matter of "finding better players and nurturing them."
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Germany's hopes of a second straight World Cup came to an end Wednesday with a shocking loss to South Korea. While Germany is considered a perennial powerhouse, defending champions often get knocked out of the first rounds of the event, says Jeffrey Marcus, publisher of The Banter.
