Sometimes—but the clearest concern is not that teams use data. It is that the pursuit of an efficient strategy can make teams play more alike, or leave fewer kinds of action for fans to enjoy. Analytics can speed that convergence, but they are not the only reason strategies change. And while there is plenty of evidence that tactics have shifted, the available evidence does not establish that fans generally enjoy pro sports less because of analytics.
What does “less fun” mean in this debate?
Fans can be reacting to different things when they call a sport boring or too predictable. One viewer may want varied tactics and athletic plays involving many players. Another may enjoy a tense decision, a home run or a long-range shot, even if teams use similar strategies to create those moments. Pace also has more than one meaning: a game can take a long time because of breaks, or feel slow because little meaningful action happens between them.
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A useful way to assess a change is to ask what it does to variety, player involvement, pace, and suspense—not simply whether a team used data to choose it. The Washington Post’s 2025 cross-sport reporting is a detailed account of these arguments, drawing on interviews with more than three dozen executives, coaches, athletes and analytics professionals. It reports perspectives and changes in play; it is not an experiment measuring analytics’ effect on enjoyment.
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How can analytics change the way a sport feels?
Teams have always looked for ways to win. Data can help them identify a tactic that works, and successful teams give others an incentive to copy it. That can make a strategy spread faster and leave fewer approaches in use. But the same convergence can happen through intuition, player skills, incentives or imitation without analytics. As Buffalo Sabres vice president of hockey strategy and research Sam Ventura put it: “But data analysis has been an accelerant.”
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Baseball executive Theo Epstein acknowledged the role of analytics while criticizing the direction of some changes: “Analytics has been a major and well-documented driver of change these last 20 years; those of us involved own that.” His concern, as reported by the Washington Post, is that changes focused on winning can come at the expense of entertainment.
| Sport and example | What changed or was reported | Why some viewers object—and what others may enjoy |
|---|---|---|
| Baseball: defensive shifts | Plate appearances ending against a shifted defense rose from 6,882 in 2013 to 59,062 in 2021, according to historical MLB figures reported by the Washington Post in 2025. | Critics see fewer opportunities for traditional fielding action and more repeated pitcher-hitter matchups. Others may value the positioning strategy. These figures count plate appearances ending against a shift, not total shifts or fan preferences. |
| Basketball: three-point attempts | NBA attempts per team per game were 6.6 in 1988–89, 22.4 in 2014–15, and 37.5 so far in 2024–25, as reported by the Washington Post in 2025. The last figure was not a final-season total. | Some fans miss post play, big-man roles and footwork; others enjoy long-range shots, dunks and the space created by three-point threats. |
| Football: fourth-down decisions | The Washington Post’s 2025 reporting describes analytics as contributing to bolder fourth-down attempts and fewer punts; it does not provide a figure here. | Going for it can create a high-stakes decision and a dramatic play. It can also make a failed attempt feel more costly. The case illustrates that optimization does not always mean less suspense. |
The NBA’s increase in three-point attempts is a change in strategy, not proof by itself that the game is less entertaining. The Post’s separate 2025 account of the NBA’s analytics debate describes successful outliers helping popularize the approach before it became widespread. Coach Steve Kerr, according to that report, does not consider the game broken, but says leagues should keep evaluating whether analytics help teams “game the system.”
Why can the same change delight one fan and frustrate another?
A tactic can make a contest more legible to one viewer and more repetitive to another. A fan who enjoys tactical chess may find defensive positioning fascinating; someone who wants to watch athletes make plays in the field may see the same positioning as removing action. Jomboy Media founder Jimmy O’Brien expressed that contrast about baseball’s old shift: “The coaches move their chess pieces, or watching athletes do athletic things?” That is one commentator’s reaction, not a survey of fans.
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Technology and presentation can also affect how a strategic intervention feels. In a 2026 interview with The Atlantic, O’Brien called automated ball-strike challenges entertaining: “It’s fun as a spectacle, and the strategy of when to challenge—rather than constant.” His view is that a visible, occasional challenge can add theater, while a constant process might not. He also describes baseball as a social, stop-and-start sport, suggesting that continuous motion is not every fan’s measure of a good game.
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These distinctions matter in a sport where one fan may want more action between pitches while another enjoys the pauses and conversation. “Pace” can mean total game length, dead time, or the frequency of meaningful events. Treating all three as one problem risks fixing a broadcast or timing issue while changing the style of play a different group values.
Have rule changes made baseball more enjoyable?
MLB has treated pace as a fan concern. Commissioner Rob Manfred said in 2018: “Pace of game is a fan issue.” The league’s response at that time included limiting mound visits and shortening between-inning breaks, with player consultation. Those measures were separate from the later 2023 rule changes. The MLB account of Manfred’s remarks describes the league’s rationale, not a current measure of fan opinion.
Before adopting its pace, shift and base changes, MLB tested proposed changes in minor-league games, according to a Sportsnet report from spring training in 2023. That report described game times as down about 24 minutes from the previous spring-training year. It is an early-season snapshot, not a current-season measurement. The Washington Post’s 2025 assessment says the 2023 changes removed roughly half an hour of dead time and boosted stolen-base rates, but did not resolve concerns about “three true outcomes” play—walks, strikeouts and home runs. These are reported outcomes, not a randomized estimate of how much the rules caused either change or affected enjoyment.
MLB has also published indicators that point to younger audiences. In 2023, MLB.TV viewership among viewers aged 18–24 rose 11% compared with 2022; the league said the platform’s average viewer age fell from 48 to 44 between 2018 and 2023. MLB reported that the median age of a ticket buyer fell from 51 to 45 between 2019 and 2024, while ticket buyers aged 18–35 increased by 9.8% over that period. These are league-published measures. They do not show that the rules caused the changes, capture every platform or ticket buyer, or prove that fans enjoy baseball more. MLB’s 2024 account also cites participation, technology and marketing as influences.
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What can the evidence actually tell us?
It establishes that strategies and measures of play have changed, and that fans, commentators and people inside sports disagree about what those changes mean. It does not settle whether fans in general find pro sports less fun because of analytics, or quantify that effect across leagues. Vivid complaints from prominent commentators are evidence of a real debate, not proof of majority opinion.
NBA executive vice president of basketball strategy and analytics Evan Wasch told the Washington Post: “But [according to] our research, the majority prefer the style of play we currently see.” The article does not give the underlying survey’s sample or question wording, so this should be understood as Wasch’s account of NBA research—not a definitive, independently assessable finding about all basketball viewers.
The practical question for a fan is more specific: does a change create strategic tension or make play feel narrower? In one sport, a bolder decision may add suspense; in another, a dominant tactic may reduce variety or sideline forms of action a viewer loves. A league’s audience figures can help describe who is watching, but they cannot settle what every fan finds entertaining.
How to judge a change in your sport
- Variety: Are teams still choosing among multiple viable approaches, or copying one dominant tactic?
- Action and participation: Does the change bring more players into the contest, or concentrate it into repeated matchups?
- Pace: Is the complaint about total runtime, pauses, or how often meaningful events happen?
- Strategic tension: Does optimization make consequential decisions more suspenseful, or make the likely outcome feel familiar?
- Fit with the sport: Baseball, basketball, football and hockey have different rhythms and expectations. One sport’s trade-off is not a diagnosis of all pro sports.
Those questions leave room for a mixed answer: data-driven decisions can make a sport more efficient and sometimes more compelling, while the spread of a successful tactic can make play more uniform. Whether that feels like an improvement depends on what the viewer wants from the game.
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