Case Competition · Haas, Fall 2025
MLB Fan Engagement Strategy
A 4-person team. A real client. One question: why isn't America's second most-played youth sport converting into long-term fans?
The Setup
Haas case competition, Fall 2025. Four-person team competing against six to ten other teams. The client was MLB. We had a fixed window to research the problem, build a recommendation, and present to a panel of judges. I worked on audience segmentation and the alternative broadcast recommendation, and presented both sections to the panel.
The Problem
MLB is growing slowly relative to the NFL, NBA, and NHL — and the demographic picture explains why. The league has a retention problem hiding inside a participation story.
72%
of MLB viewers are 35+
#2
most played youth sport in the US
↓
women significantly underengaged vs. other leagues
The paradox: baseball is the second most-played youth sport in the country, but those players aren't becoming viewers.
High participation and low retention aren't contradictions — they're a product failure. The sport is reaching kids. Something between youth participation and adult viewership is breaking down.
The Analysis
The audience segmentation work surfaced two distinct gaps with different root causes. Youth viewers aren't disengaged because they don't like baseball — they're disengaged because the broadcast product isn't built for them. The NFL already solved this: the Nickelodeon simulcast is the clearest proof of concept in professional sports that format-specific broadcasts can move the needle on a new demographic.
The female engagement gap is a different problem. It's not about format — it's about connection. Women engage more deeply with sports when they can connect with athletes as people. MLB's content strategy leaves that mostly untapped.
The Recommendation
Two-pronged. Each prong targets a distinct audience gap with a distinct mechanism.
Alternative Broadcasts for Youth Audiences
Simulcast select games on youth-skewing platforms with format modifications — shorter segments, gamified overlays, commentary calibrated for younger viewers. Modeled on the NFL's Nickelodeon playbook, which demonstrated measurable youth viewership lift without cannibalizing the main broadcast.
Projected Impact
+4–5%
immediate viewership increase, youth demographics
Original Content Targeting Women
Invest in original content that humanizes players — family stories, behind-the-scenes access, narrative-driven formats. Research across other leagues shows women engage more deeply with sports when they connect with athletes as people, not just performers. MLB's content slate largely ignores this.
Projected Impact
+16%
increase in female fan engagement
Combined Business Case
Broader and younger demographics directly improve ad effectiveness, expand sponsorship inventory value, and strengthen long-term media rights negotiations. Fan engagement strategy is media strategy.
My Contributions
Audience segmentation analysis that surfaced the youth engagement paradox — high participation, low retention — as the central framing for the whole recommendation.
Alternative broadcast recommendation, including competitive benchmarking against the NFL's Nickelodeon simulcast and viewership impact projections.
Presented both sections to the judging panel.
This was a team effort across four people. The full strategy — including the women's content recommendation and the financial modeling — was built collaboratively.