[BostonCard]

Live attendance has to factor in the number of teams and the number of games, and the typical size of an arena.  

Has to factor that in for what purpose? 
Obviously those things tend to drive the number in live attendance. 
However, if one is interested in the income from live attendance, however one gets there is mostly immaterial. Baseball salaries remain high largely from those high live attendance numbers, which indeed depend upon things like playing lots of games.

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The attendance and TV numbers do emphasize that baseball is following a different income model than the other sports. Baseball still makes it generally difficult to watch games on TV. Few are available on my live streaming service, and I believe few on cable. Most games I do see listed are blacked out in my area (Connecticut), even if the game is in the midwest - maybe even on the west coast. 
Obviously, baseball seems to have determined that actual live attendance is its income driver. 
For most, its TV viewership.

You are right, one doesn’t “have to” do anything, and of course it depends on the context in which you are looking at the data. But this thread started with a discussion of the relative popularity of the sport, and my point was that to look at cumulative in person attendance regardless of number of teams, number of games in a season, or stadium sizes, you could be misled and think MLB is 4 times as popular as the NFL, because over the course of a season, 68 million people go to a baseball game, while only 17 million go to an NFL game.

BC

[BostonCard]

Live attendance has to factor in the number of teams and the number of games, and the typical size of an arena.  

Has to factor that in for what purpose? 
Obviously those things tend to drive the number in live attendance. 
However, if one is interested in the income from live attendance, however one gets there is mostly immaterial. Baseball salaries remain high largely from those high live attendance numbers, which indeed depend upon things like playing lots of games.

---------------
The attendance and TV numbers do emphasize that baseball is following a different income model than the other sports. Baseball still makes it generally difficult to watch games on TV. Few are available on my live streaming service, and I believe few on cable. Most games I do see listed are blacked out in my area (Connecticut), even if the game is in the midwest - maybe even on the west coast. 
Obviously, baseball seems to have determined that actual live attendance is its income driver. 
For most, its TV viewership.

You are right, one doesn’t “have to” do anything, and of course it depends on the context in which you are looking at the data. But this thread started with a discussion of the relative popularity of the sport, and my point was that to look at cumulative in person attendance regardless of number of teams, number of games in a season, or stadium sizes, you could be misled and think MLB is 4 times as popular as the NFL, because over the course of a season, 68 million people go to a baseball game, while only 17 million go to an NFL game.

BC