Why does MLB feel comfortable speaking up for voter rights and putting its money where its mouth is by moving the All-Star Game to Colorado?
Simple math.
Trump won 25 states. Of those only 4 can support MLB teams, each with two: Missouri (Kansas City, St. Louis), Texas (Dallas, Houston), Florida (Tampa, Miami) and Ohio (Cincinnati, Cleveland). And Trump lost every single one of those cities.
On top of that, those 8 teams constitute barely one-quarter of the league, and except for the Texas teams (with the Rangers at #8 and Houston at #15) all are small market, including 3 of the 6 smallest.
Yes, teams have fan bases wider than their home cities. Mark Cuban made his fortune by realizing there were people in Arizona who wanted to listen to Royals games. You could call the Dallas/Fort Worth and Houston metro areas an electoral push county-wise, they’re so large. And thanks to radio the Cardinals’ fanbase extends from southern Illinois to Oklahoma. But the fact is, there is no MLB where Republicans are concentrated.
So those up in arms don’t matter for advertising. They’re probably not trekking to games the way they might a college football game. They might even have a hard time watching games, given America’s crummy rural cable service. So why should MLB cater to them and put itself on the wrong side of history?
MLB made a smart move, and Republicans are decrying it for the reason they decry most things: it’s one more reminder that they’re increasingly irrelevant in America.