Socionomics Alert: Sports Contraction

This is a major bear market. MLB contracting 25% of minor league. Baseball is also classified as a positive-mood sport according to socionomic theory. New sports like cage fighting have grown in popularity as baseball plummets.

Forbes: Shortened MLB Draft A Reminder Of Minor League Contraction Plan—And MLB’s Post-9/11 Contraction Plan

Except Major League Baseball already has the right to cut next year’s draft to no more than 20 rounds. And even if the draft isn’t drastically shortened and the pool of professional players dramatically reduced, chances are commissioner Rob Manfred’s plans to decimate the lower levels of minor league baseball will already be complete.

Last October, in the midst of a memorable postseason, Major League Baseball began its negotiations with Minor League Baseball on a new Professional Baseball Agreement by proposing the elimination of 42 minor league teams — more than one-quarter of minor league franchises — in 2021. These proposed cuts were concentrated mostly in short-season leagues located largely in remote outposts many hours away from the nearest big league city.

...If you are a baseball fan of a certain age, this is probably beginning to sound familiar. On Nov. 6, 2001 — 56 days after the 9/11 terror attacks, which forced the postponement of six days worth of games — Major League Baseball owners voted 28-2 to contract two teams, later revealed to be the Minnesota Twins and Montreal Expos, before the start of the 2002 season.

Given the high debt levels in sports, contraction could come to the NHL as well, and potentially the NFL and NBA if the economy really tanked, though less likely given their much more lucrative TV deals.