Look away, Rob Manfred.
Former NFL quarterback-turned-media personality Cam Newton has read the room and forecasts that, two decades from now, the WNBA will be more popular than Major League Baseball.
“Who’s really paying attention to baseball — especially paying attention to baseball in the regular season?” Newton asked during a recent episode of his “4th&1 podcast.” “Baseball is like a — I hate to say it — a dying sport. I think baseball will be surpassed by the WNBA in 20 years.”
The three-time Pro Bowler throws around a lot of claims about sports he never played in the episode, released Dec. 19, and some are more substantiated than others.
Whether MLB’s season is too long is a fair question — albeit one that’s probably fair to ask of any of the major North American sports.
But the question of whether the sport of baseball is dying — most often harped on by those who claim Manfred and league officials are wholly unable to capture the interest and attention of the younger generation — is an entirely different one.
The narrative has garnered no shortage of headlines in recent years, but the numbers indicate it’s not entirely true.
According to MLB.com, ticket buyers aged 18-35 increased 9.8% between 2014 and 2019.
And in a separate report, the league announced that television partners registered double-digit growth in the ‘Adult 18-34’ category from 2023 to 2024.
A year prior, after the culmination of the 2023 season — the first in which new rules were implemented to shorten games and remove dead time — data collected by a marketing and technology company independent from the league concluded that 70% of MLB fans began following their favorite team at or before age 17.
That was the highest mark among the four major North American leagues, with the NFL coming in at 66%, the NBA at 60% and the NHL at 48%.
Comparable figures for the WNBA were not provided in the study.
Even still, the baseball-is-dying narrative is sure to have its advocates.
The ascension of the WNBA, on the other hand, is unarguable.
Just two months ago, the league concluded its best season ever.
Records were set both on the court and off — including in television ratings, at the box office, and in sponsorship and merchandising revenue.
Led by rookies Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese, expectations for the 2025 season are, justifiably, through the roof.
The same should be said for 2026.
And 2027.
On and on.
As for 2045 — the year Newton’s circled in his oversized calendar — if these legends-in-the-making are still running by then, sharing the court with their own children, LeBron-style, well, the former NFLer just might be right: more people could be watching the WNBA than MLB.
