After several years of steady viewership declines and live attendance, Major League Baseball appears poised for bump upwards based on our latest Insights immersion among teens and college students. It's a welcome sign for America's pastime as professional and college football and basketball remain as popular as ever while new outposts, led mainly by mixed martial arts as well as action sports to a lesser degree have done a much better job of marketing themselves to the core 13 to 24 year old male target. So, why the up tick all of the sudden for stodgy old MLB. Very simply, it looks to be their interactive offerings. The newly fashion MLB site is considerably more robust in terms of its interactive offerings and applications than all previous versions put together. Clearly, MLB's digital media team was spot on. The site recently eclipsed the NBA's online outpost to become the second most visited professional sport's league site, behind only the NFL. 38% of teens and college students consider themselves to be a fan of MLB, up from 35% last year. 36% say they have a favorite MLB team, up slightly from 34% last year. Based on respondent feedback, we also expect an up tick in viewership during summer break. 22% said they plan to watch at least one MLB game per month this summer, up from 20% last year and 14% said they plan to watch five or more games this summer, up from 11% last year. In terms of live attendance, 12%, up from 9% last year plan to attend at least one game and 6% say they plan on attending three or more games this summer, up from 4% last year. Though it pales in comparison to fantasy football, participation in baseball fantasy leagues is up slightly to 9% after two straight years of no growth. Finally, in terms of the most popular MLB players, no real surprises here, with Yankee star Derek Jeter taking top honors receiving the most number of mentions, followed by another Yankee, Alex Rodriguez with Albert Pujols, Josh Beckett and David Wright rounding out the top five.
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