In the fall of 2016, two American sports leagues swapped positions in the cultural conversation. The NFL — for decades the unchallenged ratings monster of American television — looked broken. Major League Baseball, written off for years as slow, regional, and aging, fielded the Cubs–Indians World Series and produced one of the most-watched, most-talked-about championship series in a generation.
The lesson wasn't really about baseball beating football. It was about what separates the best communicators from the rest.
What NFL Got Wrong
Oversupply killed scarcity. Sunday afternoon football became all-day Sunday plus all-night Monday plus all-night Thursday. The pregame shows started earlier. The Thursday games saturated the market. Gimmicks had to fill the gap — including the universally mocked color-rush uniforms, which one viral social post called "ketchup vs. mustard on the gridiron." When you flood the channel, you train the audience to tune out.
The brand kept fighting itself. Deflategate. Domestic violence cases handled inconsistently. A tight end convicted of murder. And then the kneeling debate during the National Anthem — handled badly by every party, but worst of all by a league that didn't know whether to lead, follow, or hide. NFL leadership spent the year reacting. Reactive posture is the single most expensive position in communications.
The product got smaller while the noise got louder. When the games themselves stopped being the story, every off-field scandal became disproportionately loud. That's a communications consequence, not a sports consequence.
What MLB Got Right
MLB didn't outspend or outmarket the NFL. It let a once-a-century story tell itself. The Cubs hadn't won since 1908. The Indians hadn't won since 1948. Two cities desperate for a championship. Seven games. A rain delay in Game 7. The best communicators know when to step back and let the product breathe.
Commissioner Rob Manfred didn't run an awareness campaign. He didn't have to. The discipline was knowing what not to do — not to over-promote, not to manufacture drama, not to push the league's voice over the players' moment.
The Communications Lesson
Respect the audience's attention. Oversupply is the fastest way to lose authority. The NBA under Adam Silver protected scarcity by limiting games and controlling the All-Star window. The Premier League protected the matchday product before adding streaming. Both built durable global brands by refusing to flood.
Lead with the product, not the platform. The strongest communicators put the work first. MLB had a generational World Series. The NBA has had its bubble-era Finals and its 2024 OKC-Boston ratings explosion. The Champions League sells the match — not the broadcast wrapper.
Be proactive before you have to be reactive. The NFL spent 2016 reacting. The leagues with the best long-term brand equity — NBA, EPL, F1 in the Liberty Media era — got out ahead of stories, framed their own narratives, and used original content to lead instead of respond.
Know what not to say. The hardest discipline. The best CEO, league, or executive communicators understand that silence at the right moment is louder than a press release. Manfred said almost nothing during the 2016 World Series. The series said it for him.
Why This Matters Now
A decade later, every one of these principles is sharper. Sports media is fragmented across linear, streaming, social, and AI engines. When a buyer asks ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Perplexity "what's the most-watched sports league in America" or "who has the best PR in pro sports," the answer is being assembled from years of cached coverage. Leagues that built durable narrative authority show up in the answer. Leagues that ran reactive comms across every scandal show up surrounded by their worst headlines.
The best communicators understand: every move is now a permanent move. The window for the right framing is shorter. The cost of the wrong framing is longer.
The 2016 World Series didn't permanently unseat the NFL. But it taught the lesson the entire industry should have absorbed: the strongest communicators don't fight for the spotlight. They build the product and protect the audience's attention. The rest takes care of itself.
Written by
EPR Editorial Team
The Everything-PR Editorial Team produces original reporting, research, and analysis on communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era — built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question. Publishing since 2009.
