NFL Addressing Attendance Issues Faster (& Better) Than MLB

There was a good story in this weekend's New York Times about how fans at NFL games are paying increasing attention to TVs and decreasing attention to the actual game on the field (h/t to Michael Kruse's blog):

The Jaguars realize that in the fight for fans’ attention and wallets, their competition is not just from college football and other sports, but from fantasy football, social media and the highlights, statistics and online discussion that can sometimes be hard to follow in stadiums but have become an essential part of N.F.L. Sundays.
...
“The teams are asking whether the TV has gotten so good that the snake starts to eat its own tail,” said Andrew Billings, who teaches sports media at the University of Alabama and is a co-author of “The Fantasy Sport Industry: Games Within Games.” “You’ve offered such a good product at home that people don’t go. Yet the product is good in part because you have so many screaming fans.”

All joking aside that the story was written at a Jaguars game, where fans have some very legit reasons not to want to see the on-field product, the story addresses why attendance numbers have been sinking for the NFL since its' 2007 peak.

Those attendance issues also exist in MLB, where ticket sales make up an ever-shrinking portion of team and league revenues.  As Kruse suggested - perhaps only half tongue-in-cheek - "maybe admission should be free."