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I don't see the problem here. Baseball (or basketball, or football) in of itself is merely a sport. However, Major League Baseball or the National Football League, etc. is a business. I have been accused, at times, of being a bit of a traditionalist when it comes to sports, especially baseball, but I still understand that to many of the ownership groups involved in professional sports they are jsut another business. There are some owners, Mark Cuban, George Steinbrenner, The Maloofs, to name a few that seem to put the sport ahead of the business but these teams are essentially money making ventures at the core. If you want to argue that over the years the actual performance of the teams on the field (court) have become less a part of the marketing of that team than it should be, then I am in total agreement. As you said, the games played have become secondary, and that is unfortunate but because of all of the competition in our society for the entainment dollar teams and leagues have had to resort to "guerrila marketing" tactics to compete. But, to say that the big 3 are on life support, well, I would totally disagree! As Halx stated, baseball is undergoing a major resurgence and the popularity of the NFL has grown steadily over the past 2 decades or so. The NBA and the job that David Stern has done over the past 10 years is another thread entirely, but I would venture to say it is still well beyond being on life support.
Professional sports may have reached a saturation point of sorts with all of the assorted levels of "professional" sports in competition for the average sports fans dollar, but I that just goes to show that overall pro sports are more popular than they have ever been in our society. The problem is that there are just so many choices.
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