MLB Teams Extending Beer Sales Into Eighth Inning

Major League Baseball’s new rules are speeding up games to a tremendous degree. Through the first week-plus of the season, games are coming in at about two hours and forty minutes, a huge drop from three hours and three minutes in 2022. The league’s owners have to be happy about the changes they implemented. Unfortunately, as an unintended consequence, their pocketbooks are taking a hit.

With shorter games has come fewer concession sales. It’s been such a dramatic drop-off, that MLB teams are now extending beer sales beyond the seventh inning into the eighth. It’s only a matter of time before they keep selling beer — and all concessions — through the end of games.

This is an entirely predictable consequence of the league’s new rules. It’s clear the changes to speed up games were solely geared towards television audiences. By making things quicker, MLB is hoping to keep viewers engaged longer, meaning it can sell late-inning television ads for more money due to increased viewership. Of course, that also means the in-person experience will change as a result.

A prediction from this writer: Eventually ticket sales will increase with the shorter games as families can attend weeknight games and not arrive back home too late. That said, concession sales will continue to trend downwards. The way to balance those trends is to get more people in the stands. In the end, competitive teams won’t see their bottom lines impacted tremendously.