Why does MLB’s early playoff slate feature so many day games? ‘Numbers don’t lie’

What’s with all the daytime playoff games?

Sentimentalists longing for bygone eras of Major League Baseball love them, sure. But for fans who reside on the West Coast, the first playoff game on Tuesday is pretty early: Game 2 in the Wild Card round between the Detroit Tigers and the Houston Astros is scheduled for 11:30 a.m.

Meanwhile, fans in Houston, where the game actually takes place, will be tuning to that contest at 1:30 p.m. local time — if they’re not too busy at work or school.

So why doesn’t the commissioner’s office just start the games later? Couldn’t more fans watch that way, even if all the start times are closer together?

“Believe me, this is a debate that I’ve been on every side of over the years,” said Noah Garden, MLB’s deputy commissioner for business and media who oversees MLB’s television decisions. “But the numbers don’t lie. And at the end of the day, you kind of have to use them. The good news for all these debates: it’s water cooler talk to me, and it’s interesting. It’s fun. But there’s empirical evidence here.”

Garden and executives at MLB’s postseason broadcast partners, including ESPN and Fox, all pointed to the same goal: maximizing viewers. And the evidence has shown them that the best way to do that is to minimize overlap in games played.

“So that, if you want, you can watch as many of the games as you want to and not have to choose,” said Ashley O’Connor, vice president of programming and acquisitions for ESPN, which is carrying the Wild Card games across its channels, including ABC and ESPN2. “People do want the ability to watch as much as they can.”

Some amount of overlap is always going to be inevitable, particularly this early in the postseason with so many teams in the running. Still, when one game ends, MLB typically finds viewership for another game that’s ongoing will spike.

“There’s more fans than people realize that want to watch multiple games, and when you’re trying to reach the most fans, that overlap takes away from the reach,” Garden said. “It’s not like we’ve never overlapped. And so you look at the numbers, and you’re like, when you do it, that’s what you sacrifice: you kind of sacrifice the broader reach.”

MLB has final say over game times, but the process is collaborative with its TV partners, who pay handsome rights fees. After the ESPN-hosted Wild Card round, TBS has the American League teams for the Division Series and League Championship Series, while Fox (and FS1) has the National League for those rounds, as well as the World Series.

Bill Wanger, executive vice president at Fox Sports and head of programming and scheduling, said the process is both art and science.

“Stuff like this is being talked about weeks in advance, once you have a sense of who’s going to be in the postseason,” Wanger said. “One example of that is to surround the games that we have with the strongest companion programming that we can.

“NLCS Game 1, we worked with baseball on getting that on Sunday, Oct. 13, in primetime, and that’s (likely) going to be on Fox, and we’re going to have an NFL doubleheader leading in … which will feature Dallas and Detroit football. Things like that we’ve been working on for months with baseball.”

Some decisions, though, naturally come down to the last minute. ESPN’s Wild Card scheduling discussions were intense in the last two weeks as match-ups became clearer, O’Connor said.

On Tuesday, the first day of the postseason, a 9 p.m. ET vice presidential debate pushed game times up further. The Kansas City Royals and Baltimore Orioles started at 4 p.m. ET, rather than the 4:30 slot they’re scheduled for Wednesday. And the New York Mets and Milwaukee Brewers began at 5:30 p.m. ET, rather than the 7:30 p.m. slot they have Wednesday.

Some issues are still in progress even with the Wild Card round underway.

“There will be four Game 1’s on Saturday, Oct. 5,” Wanger said. “We’re talking to baseball about, ‘OK well, Fox is going to have two games, and Turner’s going to have two games, what’s the order going to be? Where are we going to put the respective teams?’ And things get taken into account, like time zone where the games are being played. Obviously, if you’re in a West Coast venue like the Dodgers’, you’re going to want to go later in the day.”

And yes, the elephant in the room — market size, how big the fanbase is — matters too.

“Definitely one of the factors,” Wanger said.

“When you’re talking about reach, the size of your market could certainly be a factor in the amount of fans you reach,” Garden said. “Market size is tricky, because some of these storied franchises have a tremendous amount of displaced fans. So it’s not always about like, ‘Hey, because you’re from New York, you’re always going to get that certain time slot.’ There’s other teams that have fan bases that are larger than you think, especially from a national perspective.”

Reaching the maximum number of viewers isn’t a goal solely born out of a desire to spread baseball merriment far and wide. Ultimately, the TV networks have airtime to sell to advertisers, and the ability to deliver a distinct audience helps that effort.

“The other end on the business side of things for a second: that’s the last thing that our media partners want, they don’t want overlap,” Garden said. “They want the biggest opportunity to have the game that they have and the time slot that can attract the most baseball fans at one time.”

But Garden acknowledged a “debate” about start times, and the executives said they do go back and forth amongst themselves.

“Internally within ESPN, we have very healthy debates about what everybody’s point of view is and what it looks like, and we also have those same healthy debates with baseball,” O’Connor said. “Times are changing. Are we still acting to what the 2024 audience is looking for, and not programming back to even the 2022 audience? If we’re not constantly looking at it, then I think we’re doing a disservice.”

Corporate partners are always going to try to speak well of each other, but there are occasional dust-ups and disagreements in scheduling, or at least disappointments. Patrick Crakes, today a media consultant, was a longtime executive at Fox. He recalled that in one of his final seasons with the network, likely 2015, MLB wanted the Chicago Cubs consistently in primetime, which was frustrating for Fox, because Fox that year was carrying the American League.

“Baseball made a decision to prioritize the story, and there wasn’t anything that stopped them, but it did break up some protocol,” Crakes said. “Baseball is trying to organize their schedule in a way that fulfills the things that their partners negotiated with in the contracts, but also tries to do what’s best for baseball, which is typically what’s best for the majority of the fans.”

From a fan perspective, no scenario will ever satisfy everyone. Some fans probably will always be left trying to find a way to watch games during their workdays. Of course, not everyone’s working a 9-to-5 anyway. But Lee Berke, a media consultant, said the ability to stream games on phones is making daytime games more accessible.

ESPN won’t tell if you won’t.

“The joy of the way that ESPN distributes our networks, you are able to still consume that content while you’re at your desk,” O’Connor said. “Whether your boss knows is between you and your boss, but I’m not getting into that.”

(Top photo of a camera operator at Truist Park: David J. Griffin /Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)