MLB strives to cut playing time from over 3 hours

The commissioner or head of the four major pro sports in the U.S. holds immense power. The commissioners are elected by team owners, but once elected, commissionership is independent. Rob Manfred is serving as the Major League Baseball’s commissioner since replacing Bud Selig on January 25. Manfred signed a five-year contract. However, depending on his capability, he can continue to serve on the post for a longer period. The previous commissioner Selig served as the head of the Major League Baseball for 22 years, including his service as acting commissioner. There are many commissioners who served on the post for more than 20 years, excluding that of the National Football League.

Commissioner Manfred announced on Friday that he will step up efforts to reduce the duration of individual games beginning this year’s exhibition games. He plans on putting into place three major measures that are very strong. When a manager asks for judgment through video replay, the manager is required to send signals from the dugout. During video replay to make judgment, the batter can never step outside the batter’s box: he should keep one of his feet in the box. Hence, the acts of stepping outside the batter’s box and spitting onto, touching and tapping on the glove, like Yasiel Puig of the LA Dodgers, Davis Ortiz and Austin Pedroia of the Boston Red Sox, will likely decline. The switching of offense and defense will be completed during the period of TV commercials (2 minutes 25 seconds for local and 2 minutes and 45 seconds for national), and the game should resume immediately after advertising. Reduction of playing time will take effect from May this year, after a one-month grace period in April.

Reduction of playing time is a measure that was considered by the previous commissioner Selig and is being implemented by Manfred. The Major League Baseball has seen playing time increase for several years. In recent years, it saw playing time increase from 2 hours and 52 minutes on average in 2011, 2 hours and 56 minutes in 2012, 2 hours and 59 minutes in 2013, and 3 hours and 2 minutes in the last season. Notably, the playing time of games between the rivals, the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox, has been extended significantly to up to 3 hours and 30 minutes. Of the 30 Major League teams, Seattle was the only team that did not exceed 3 hours in average playing time last year.

Commissioner Manfred seeks to accelerate the proceeding of baseball games due to a sense of looming crisis. Younger baseball fans are shunning baseball, and instead flocking to games of the National Football League and the National Basketball Association. Baseball is known to be a boring sport among young people. Fans’ preference for a league is proportionate to the fee on the right to broadcast its games on TV. NBA renewed the right to broadcast its games with ESPN and TNT before the start of the 2014-2015 season. The fee more than doubled from 950 million U.S. dollars on average per year in previous years to over 2 billion dollars. NFL had already signed contract to broadcast its games for an astronomical amount of money that MLB and NBA can hardly match.

Currently, MLB has the broadcast right contracted through 2021. The value amounts to 12.4 billion dollars for a period of eight years. This translates into about 1.55 billion dollars on average per year. This amount is smaller than that of the contract for the NBA, which was signed recently. The value of the contract for NFL came to 27 billion dollars for a period of nine years. This is the reason Commissioner Manfred has rolled up his sleeves to reduce playing time.