It's Official: Baseball Slides

  • October 31, 2002
Media buyers looking at next year’s sports plans may be interested to know that a new Harris poll shows that when asked to pick their favorite sport, the largest number of adults selected professional football (27%), followed by baseball (14%), men's professional basketball (11%) and auto racing (10%). Pro football's lead over baseball has widened from seven points in 1994 to thirteen points this year. In 1985, football and baseball were virtually equal (at 24% and 23%, respectively). Since 1985, several sports have attracted an increased number of fans: Professional football, is up from 59% to 60%; Men's professional basketball, from 32% to 40% and auto racing, from 21% to 31%. Baseball (which has not totally recovered from the 1994 strike and has played most of the 2002 season under the threat of another strike), was down from down from 54% to 46% in terms of audience.
Next story loading loading..