Breaking down MLB's business stats; SoFi steps up to sponsor TMWR Sports' TGL and the Hornets go big with MrBeast
MLB's road to the World Series starts today, Tuesday, with four wild card games. Send me your pick for your World Series matchup and winner. I'd love to see who you think the final two teams will be and who's standing at the end. This is your Morning Buzzcast for Tuesday, October 3rd. I'm Abe Madkour. Let's start with baseball. We noted yesterday that MLB ended its season up over 9% year over year in attendance, its biggest jump in over three decades. SBJ listed team by team attendance and the top five were the Reds. The Reds were up 44% at the gate, the Guardians up 38%. The Orioles, not surprising, up 36%, the Pirates up 30% and the playoff bound Marlins, up 28%.
There were some good positive stories. Very few teams saw attendance dips and only one saw a drop of more than 10%. The top five attendance drops were the White Sox were down 14% at the gate that feeds into the season that they had. The Nationals were down 8%. The Cardinals, who didn't perform up to the normal expectations in St. Louis, down 2%, the Mets were down 2%, and the Dodgers just down 1%. You see the gains were much higher than the drops. SBJ's Austin Karp looked at MLB ratings for all the US based teams and saw some interesting numbers. The Texas Rangers, of course, going to the playoffs, they had the biggest jump. Their ratings were up 99% on Bally Sports Southwest. Despite finishing well out of the postseason, the Pittsburgh Pirates show their hold in that marketplace. They saw the second-biggest gain among regional sports networks. Their games were up 72% on AT&T SportsNet Pittsburgh.
Now, rounding out the top five, not surprisingly, the Orioles were up 65% on MASN. The Reds were up 65% on Bally Sports Ohio, and the Cubs and the Twins were up 34% on Marquees Sports Network and Bally Sports North. Those are some strong numbers. On the flip side, again, this mirrors a little bit of attendance. The White Sox, down 41% on local ratings. The Royals were down 30%, Cardinals again down 27%. The Mets were down 27% and the Yankees not a good story in New York. I'm sure there'll be some thoughtful discussions led by Hal Steinbrenner on how to turn that around. The Yankees were down 25%. Those were among the biggest declines in Major League Baseball in terms of the ratings performance.
Here are some other MLB facts. The average time of a nine inning game dropped to two hours and 40 minutes. That was a 24-minute decrease from 2022. Now, this average game, it dropped to its 1985 level. That's amazing. These were the fastest, swiftest games since 1985. Baseball games passed three hours for the first time in 2016. It was three hours and 10 minutes in 2021. You see how much these changes impacted the game. There were nine three and a half hour games this year, down from a record 390 in 2021. The Miami Marlins had the fastest average of just under two hours and 35 minutes for a nine inning game. The Orioles and the Padres, they had the highest average two hours and 44 minutes, so still quite a difference. Baseball made changes to speed up the game, and they clearly worked. I'm ready for some fun postseason. I love the tension of postseason baseball.
Let's move on. Tomorrow Sports' TGL, or Tomorrow Golf League, will launch in January and we've talked about this concept on the Buzzcast and we expect more and more news coming out about this startup. The league has now landed its first sponsor and it's a big one. SoFi is on board as presenting sponsor of the league, as well as the title sponsor of its venue in Florida. The league will be called TGL presented by SoFi and competitions will take place at SoFi Center. That's the venue currently under construction at Palm Beach State College in Florida. Tomorrow Golf Co-founder Mike McCarley, he said this deal with SoFi was about a year in the making. He first pitched the idea on a Zoom call last fall to SoFi, CEO, Anthony Noto. Noto of course, is the former NFL and Goldman Sachs and Twitter executive. McCarley said that Noto understood the concept immediately.
Noto tells SBJ's, Josh Carpenter, that he liked the uniqueness of the league. He liked that it will air in primetime on Monday and Tuesday nights in January. He compared it to the launch of Monday night of football in the 1970s, just that different, that unique that out front. As we noted, TGL is scheduled to launch in January and broadcast testing at SoFi Center is expected to begin next month. A media rights deal has not been announced, although it was reported they're close to a deal with ESPN. Four team ownerships, L.A., Boston, Atlanta, and New York have been confirmed. They still need to announce ownership intentions for two more teams. That'll bring them to the six teams. They also will need 18 players, 12 players are currently on board, so more announcements to come. Tomorrow Sports has retained CAA sports to assist it in selling sponsorship and in finding ownership investors. TGL, Tomorrow Sports getting closer and closer to its launch in January.
The Charlotte Hornets have signed a pretty interesting Jersey patch sponsorship with Feastables, and that is the first ever collaboration between an NBA team and a content creator led brand. Why is this deal interesting? It's because the snack company was founded by Mr. Beast, Jimmy "Mr. Beast" Donaldson, he's a North Carolina native. He's a Hornets fan. We know him as a YouTuber whose channel has 187 million subscribers. His social media following has more than 350 million subscribers. Mr. Beast has a strong, deep and loyal following.
Like I said, the fact that he's a native of North Carolina and a Hornets fan makes this a particularly interesting deal because the Hornets feel they can draft off his large following and attract new fans. The team's previous Jersey deal was with LendingTree, that expired. The team has new owners. We've talked about this, Rick Schnall and Gabe Plotkin. They really wanted to come up with something different to potentially grow the fan base. Now, they will see the Feastables patch on not just the NBA team, but also the G League franchise and the NBA 2K franchise.
Feastables branding will be displayed on the media backdrops. The Hornets fan shop will be the only retail outlet where fans can buy the jerseys with the Feastables patch terms of the deal, were not disclosed, but the bottom line, this is a noteworthy deal with one of the most popular YouTube personalities in the world. It's interesting for Mr. Beast, as he's used his platform to expand into food, consumer goods, and merchandise sales. He's aligning with the NBA and the Hornets to try to grow his brand and certainly the Hornets are looking to draft off the popularity of Mr. Beast.
It was noted that when Lionel Messi signed with MLS, there was a percentage of the Apple Season Pass subscription that he would receive, but also Apple would have access to film a documentary on his first season. Well, Apple TV released the trailer from Messi Meets America. It's a six-part documentary from Smuggler Entertainment. It features the story of Messi's move to Inter Miami. The series will premiere October 11th with the first three episodes and additional episodes are in production and will premiere later in the season.
But overall, the Messi story has shifted a bit, hasn't it? With him not playing because of an undisclosed injury. One source called me yesterday and all they wanted to talk about was Messi, asking me time and again if I knew what kind of injury Messi had and they had their own opinion that this will keep him from playing for a while. The lack of information about his injury is surely frustrating fans who have paid a lot to see Messi play as the club has really publicly ruled out Messi out of only one game recently, but he's played very, very sparingly, really since early September.
That's been a fine line for the club to walk. You want to be clear with the fan base, but I'm sure they're trying to maintain some competitive advantage of whether Messi is or is not playing. But the storyline has shifted from a massive success to now a bit more wait and see, and wait and see the full impact of Messi as the next few weeks unfold. I said it before, I'll say it again. MLS, soccer in America, far more interesting when he Messi is on the pitch. Let's hope he returns soon.
I don't want to make this a habit on the Buzzcast, but two more people left us and need to be recognized. Jim Caple, a very talented baseball writer who spent 17 years at ESPN died Sunday at 61. He covered 20 World Series for ESPN. I remember him at the St. Paul Pioneer Press. He wrote in Seattle for the Post-Intelligencer, he wrote for the Athletic. Caple's family said he had ALS and dementia. He died Sunday at 61, way too young. Rest in peace, Russ Francis. I grew up watching Russ Francis play for the Patriots. The Patriots were terrible, but he was unlike any tight end people had ever seen. Then the Patriots had one, or two, or three good years and he really was amazing, incredibly athletic and a free spirit on and off the field. YouTube some of Russ Francis' highlights to see how he changed the position of the tight end forever. That is your Morning Buzzcast for Tuesday, October 3rd. I'm Abe Madkour. Thanks for listening to the Buzzcast. Stay healthy, be good to each other. I'll speak to you tomorrow.