Baseball Prospectus Chat with Clay

[Clay Dreslough]

If you missed it, here's the transcript:

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/ch...php?chatId=130

[Sylvius]

Clay, in your chat you said:

"A big question for someone like EA is why Madden outsells MVP something like 6-to-1 even though baseball is just as popular in the US as football. I think it's because a ton of baseball fans don't want to 'play' the games."

There's probably some of that going on, but a bigger point I see is that people who don't like baseball have little or no interest in playing baseball games. Whereas, Madden (and similar games) are popular even among people who don't follow the relevant sport. I think football's an interminably boring sport, and yet computer games that depict it are fun to play. The same applies to hockey (though I actually like hockey).

If you think baseball's a boring sport, there's not much a computer game depicting it can do to keep your attention.