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    ‘Baseball Is a Dying Sport’ – Former NFL MVP Bashes MLB, Predicts WNBA Will Surpass It in Popularity in Next 20 Years

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    The MLB received intense criticism and is labeled "a dying sport" by one former NFL MVP, who believes the WNBA will overtake baseball.

    Sports are supposed to be competitive by design. However, competition between different sports is something we rarely see, especially on a public forum. A comment from LeBron James about the NBA owning Christmas Day seems to have opened that can of worms.

    After James’ comments, former Heisman Trophy winner and NFL QB Cam Newton dissed Major League Baseball and its dying popularity.

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    The Death of Baseball? Cam Newton Seems To Think So

    Appearing on the 4th-and-1 podcast, Newton had some controversial comments to drop — none more so than around baseball. Calling it a “dying sport,” he believed that MLB would fall by the wayside in just two decades.

    “Baseball is like a, hate to say it, a dying sport. I think baseball will be surpassed by WNBA in 20 years.”

    The WNBA, on its part, has enjoyed a recent surge in popularity. Thanks to an electric collegiate scene and a popular 2024 rookie class led by Caitlin Clark, the league was registering record-breaking attendance and ratings.

    However, the gap between the WNBA and the MLB viewership numbers is impossibly steep. While the basketball league averaged a shade over 1.5 million viewers in the Finals, the World Series saw regular numbers upward of 7 million people.

    And when it comes to attendance, the numbers don’t even come remotely close. While the WNBA saw record numbers with an average of just under 10,000 people in the arena, baseball games were, on average, attended by over 30,000 people.

    Simultaneously, the finances for both leagues are miles apart. While the WNBA struggles to find adequate salaries for its players, baseball regularly sees contracts in the multi-hundred-million-dollar range.

    As a result, while the idea is noble, it feels a monumental task to imagine a scenario where baseball is taken over by the WNBA. After all, the league is starting to see an upward trajectory as it continues to embrace rule changes to improve the product for its viewers.

    While the WNBA has a ton of goodwill on its side, and rightfully so, scaling the heights of the MLB is going to be a tough hill to climb in the near future. Even 20 years later, it feels unlikely that Newton’s predictions come to fruition.

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