MLB Attendance Declining

[LanceyHoward]

Baseball has seen a large attendance decline this season which Rob Manfred blames on weather and the Wall Street Journal on some really bad teams.

But how are local television ratings holding up? Local radio is another industry battered by digital competition. Are MLB radio contracts declining in value?

Major League Baseball Sees a Sharp Drop in Attendance

 

[TheSportsPredictor]

Must be the anthem protests.

 

[Azrael]

I blame **** Whitman.

 

[TigerVols]

I blame **** Whitman.

Why? He’s probably spending all his newly free time going to games.

 

[Songbird]

It's not because of the Pirates -- they had a tremendous off-season.

 

[outofplace]

Wow. You got YankeeCoward to come out of hiding with that one, Songbird. Not bad for a tired bit of trolling.

Actually, the Pirates are a perfect example of one reason for the decline. Ownership can only tell so many lies about building for something only to continue to cut payroll even when the team is decent before some of the fans come to their senses and get fed up.

I know the baseball apologists here like to point to McCutchen's modest production this season and say the team was right, but they are forgetting the way the Pirates sold him as the face of the franchise and the proof of ownership's commitment to winning. He was the superstar they kept, the MVP they locked up rather than dumping him. He was they guy they weren't going to have to watch in another uniform. That they got so little value in return after claiming last year they were holding out for something big just made it worse. That's before you even get to trading away Cole around the same time, making it absolutely clear it was just another purge.

Were those moves smarter than they looked at the time? Maybe. They were able to replace McCutchen with Dickerson and Cole has come down to Earth a bit of late, but it's a matter of perception. The Pirates have been doing this **** for decades. They lost every year for over 20 years. They built a contender, but started selling off pieces before the three-year playoff run was even over. You can argue whether those moves made sense on the field all they want, but if you don't understand how bad they look, you are beyond help in this issue.

 

[Songbird]

 

[lcjjdnh]

Didn’t the latest tax bill eliminate the deductibility of sporting tickets? I wonder if that’s contributes to it.

 

[Michael_ Gee]

I love baseball,, but if I were to find myself in Miami (or KC, or Tampa, or even Baltimore) I'm sure I'd find something better to do than heading out to the 'ol ballpark.

 

[BitterYoungMatador2]

Considering how much more competitive the Phillies have been this year compared to the previous five I’m kinda shocked at the attendance. That said, in the past six months the city had the Eagles run through the playoffs and Super Bowl as well as the Sixers and Flyers make the playofffs. The fanbase might just be tapped from all that and the Phils are being taken for granted.

 

[Huggy]

Attendance in Toronto has cratered. Weather isn't an issue but a lousy team and larcenous ticket prices left over from the playoff years are huge factors.

 

[Slacker]

tired bit of trolling

 

[melock]

Considering how much more competitive the Phillies have been this year compared to the previous five I’m kinda shocked at the attendance. That said, in the past six months the city had the Eagles run through the playoffs and Super Bowl as well as the Sixers and Flyers make the playofffs. The fanbase might just be tapped from all that and the Phils are being taken for granted.

I’m going down next Tuesday. Will be interested to see what the crowd is like. Especially after this 10-game stretch against the Natalie and Yankees.

 

[The Big Ragu]

I love baseball,, but if I were to find myself in Miami (or KC, or Tampa, or even Baltimore) I'm sure I'd find something better to do than heading out to the 'ol ballpark.

We were in the car last night and I put the Yankees game on, as hard as it is to listen to John sterling and Suzyn Waldman. They were complaining about Tampa pumping in fake crowd noise and a speaker being near their booth, so it made it hard for them to hear each other, even through their headphones. Sterling said something like, “They do it because there are no people here, and the ones that are here aren’t very enthusiastic, so the team thinks the fake crow noise creates a sense of excitement.”

 

[exmediahack]

There are SO many breaks that, in-person, it’s insufferable.

16 or 17 breaks between the innings. Add in 8 pitching changes. If one team gets up 6-1 in the second, game is over.

Royals’ games are back to pre-2014 levels. We went to one game last year and it was incredibly boring. Left in the 7th in a one-run game. I suppose I would only do playoff/WS games or the last week of the regular season to make a playoff run. No reason to go to a regular season game.

That being said, the 2014 wild card and the two World Series games were some of the best days of our life. The stakes.

There is so much inventory now that there is no urgency to even go. We took out the extended sports package because the Royals are awful. In 2015/16, we probably watched 155 games each year on TV.

I also feel the same way about NFL and Most college football and basketball games.

However, I’m a new convert to MLS (two hours and no commercial breaks during the halves) as well as NBA and NHL - both are superb to see in person.

 

[DanOregon]

When you talk about the "three true outcomes" walk, whiff and homer - it takes a lot of the drama out of things. Guy on first who might steal, a play at the plate, a bunt, someone hoping to leg out a triple.

 

[cjericho]

I love baseball,, but if I were to find myself in Miami (or KC, or Tampa, or even Baltimore) I'm sure I'd find something better to do than heading out to the 'ol ballpark.

Went to Orlando and Tampa a couple summers ago and definitely wanted to go see the Rays. Went to the beach in Clearwater with old friends, neighbors who moved to Fla.
It was pretty good, but I would've rather gone to the Rays game at night instead of going out to eat. In a place like KC and Tampa, I'd rather see game since on a weeknight you
can get a good ticket for not much. Don't need to pay $100 to tell everyone 'hey I went to Fenway or Wrigley, it's great.' although guess I do want to get to Wrigley some
day, been to Fenway.

 

[Michael_ Gee]

When you talk about the "three true outcomes" walk, whiff and homer - it takes a lot of the drama out of things. Guy on first who might steal, a play at the plate, a bunt, someone hoping to leg out a triple.

In the Depression, fast pitch softball was a very big deal for a few years, with games by top teams (men and women) drawing as big or bigger crowds than many major league teams, especially on the West Coast, where there were no major league teams. But that's a sport where there are only the three true outcomes. People figured out they were paying good money to watch two players, the pitcher and catcher, have a game of catch. I strongly suspect that's part of the attendance decline this year.

 

[GilGarrido]

Took my wife & son to a Rays-Blue Jays game when we were in Clearwater last week and my son to a Braves-Orioles game last night. We sat in right field both times and arrived early so he could try to catch BP home runs. Glad we went to both of them, but I don't think I'd want to go to Tropicana a second time. There were 11K fans in St. Pete (on a Tuesday, with two below-.500 teams) compared to 37K in Atlanta (on a Friday, with the Braves surprisingly in first & lots of Orioles fans, though I expect that without the long afternoon rain, the crowd would've been even larger). Compared to SunTrust, Tropicana seemed like a minor league experience, only in part because of the small crowd. The lighting was poor, and I was surprised how much trouble I had picking the ball up against the ceiling after it crossed the lights. The ushers were all friendly retirees, which gave the place the feel of a Wal-Mart. Many fewer food & merchandise options than at SunTrust, and not as many things for kids to do.

We go to a Braves game most summers, along with occasional games elsewhere during vacations, and that probably isn't affected much by the teams' records or prospects. Once our son leaves home, though, it'll be harder to stay interested and go to games unless the team is competitive, or at least has a minor league system with hope for the future, like the Braves have had the last few years. If what seems like a growing split between haves & no-hopers persists, I wonder how baseball will keep fans of the no-hopers interested. I don't want to see continued expansion of the postseason. Non-U.S. soccer leagues have promotion/relegation to get fans of bad teams excited about trying to stay in the first division, but that's not an option either.

 

[X-Hack]

There are SO many breaks that, in-person, it’s insufferable.

16 or 17 breaks between the innings. Add in 8 pitching changes. If one team gets up 6-1 in the second, game is over.

Royals’ games are back to pre-2014 levels. We went to one game last year and it was incredibly boring. Left in the 7th in a one-run game. I suppose I would only do playoff/WS games or the last week of the regular season to make a playoff run. No reason to go to a regular season game.

...However, I’m a new convert to MLS (two hours and no commercial breaks during the halves) as well as NBA and NHL - both are superb to see in person.

This is it in a nutshell. As a Detroit fan living in Boston, I try to get to a couple of games every year when the Tigers come and I go to Fenway a few other times each year. I used to go a lot more, but the games have just gotten so incredibly hard to sit through. Very little action and the players seem so robotic (and when they do have a little "personality" it seems contrived and artificial). I don't watch much on TV anymore either, except having it on as background noise. As a kid, a teenager and as a young adult there were few things I'd rather do than attend a major-league baseball game. Now it feels like a chore that I do out of obligation. Baseball was always my #1 sport, but I now much prefer taking my kid to Celtics games and Revs matches. MLS is a better product in person than people realize (if the Revs could get a soccer-only stadium in Boston or an inner-ring town that's transit-accessible, that would be a game-changer -- I'd be a regular. I just hate driving down to Foxboro to watch with a crowd of 18-20K in a 65,000 seat stadium with football lines on the artificial turf).