What’s wrong with baseball?

Posted on July 14th, 2009. Written by Emmett Jones.

We’ve reached the halfway point for baseball! Excitement abounds.  My Pittsburgh Pirates have taken their normal course of action…

1. Get the fans borderline excited for 10 games or so, by playing half way decent baseball

2. Trade away all their talent, of which we clearly did not have an overabundance, for younger prospects which usually have little to no chance of panning out (patiently awaiting Freddie Sanchez trade)

3. Throw in the towel and be completely out of the playoff hunt by mid-July (we’re 10 games out, yay!).

It’s good to know that everything is “right” with the Buccos; we’re right on schedule.  Around the league though, something seems to be amiss…and it shows.  Baseball attendance is down almost 6% from this time a season ago, according to Sports Business Daily,

MLB teams are averaging 30,105 fans per game through July 12, down 5.9% compared to the same period a year ago. The Yankees’ home attendance at their new ballpark continues to be the highest in baseball, despite the fact that the team is down 13.8% from its average a year ago due to a reduction in capacity from the old Yankee Stadium. The Phillies have parlayed their World Series championship into a 5.6% jump at the gate, while the team they defeated, the Rays, has seen a 9.4% increase. Leading the league in attendance gains are the Marlins (+20.5%) and the Royals (+17.4%). The Tigers (-21.8%) and Nationals (-21.7%) have seen the biggest drops at the gate.

Skipping over the too obvious and too easy joke about the Nationals drop in attendance, there does seem to be some cause for concern.  A 6% drop in attendance is certainly nothing to laugh at, especially after the increase in attendance seen in the two seasons prior.  So what is the cause for the attendance drop? Maybe fans are turning their back on the game due to the apparently rampant usage of P.E.D.’s in baseball? Or maybe its just “baseball economics”?

The high price of attending games is by far the biggest problem in Major League Baseball, an Associated Press-Knowledge Networks poll of fans released Thursday shows.

A whopping 63 percent said the steep cost was the game’s top trouble — up from 45 percent in a survey right before opening day. Worries over players making too much money or taking steroids lagged behind.

The average ticket price is $26.64, up 5 percent over last season, according to the Team Marketing Report. (via Seattle Times Newspaper)

So, it looks like the consistently increasing ticket prices have finally come back to bite baseball.  Almost a year ago i wrote about misleading baseball revenues, as it seems as though the increased ticket prices raised revenues even though attendance had either dropped in some cases or remained stagnant.  And now, even though baseball has lowered its increase in ticket prices (prices increased 10.8% in 2008), the fact that an increase exists, coupled with a failing economy can account for a large portion of the attendance decline.

That all being said, the interesting thing to watch for will be next season.  Will baseball bank on the economy getting better and raise prices again, knowing that they can pull more people if the increase isn’t too big? Or will they forecast a bearish economy and lower prices in hopes of pulling more fans with cheap tickets and promotions?

Ah, the complexities of the baseball economy.

Sports Business Daily — MLB Attendance down 5.9% at the All-Star Break

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Trackbacks

1. Misleading MLB revenue and attendance? | mlbfancentral.net
2. The Fan Cost Index | Sports Business Digest
3. Sports! No Longer Recession-Proof | Sports Business Digest
4. The money is on the Rays, but is anyone watching? | Sports Business Digest
5. What's wrong with baseball? | Sports Business Digest

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