Here is an example of what appears to be a flawed study.
Street & Smith’s SportsBusiness Journal, a weekly industry newspaper, has just published a ranking of the best markets for minor league sports, a repeat of earlier efforts in 2005 and 2007.
Factors that go into the rankings include each community’s paid attendance for minor league sports along with the longevity of the franchises. Also included are a number of economic and demographic factors, including unemployment and per capita income.
Let’s see how the St. Louis Cardinals minor league affiliates fared.
On one hand, the Quad Cities scored very high, ranking 31st among 239 markets that have minor league teams in baseball, football, basketball, hockey, soccer and/or lacrosse.
That seems to make sense as the new owners of the River Bandits of the Midwest League have aggressively promoted their club and set a new post-renovation mark for single-season attendance when the team passed the 2008 figure with six games remaining in 2009. The club reports that ticket sales, concessions, merchandise sales and sponsorships are all up over last season, which was one of the best in team history.
On the other hand, consider Batavia, New York, home of the Cardinals’ New York-Penn League affiliate. The team averages fewer than 1,000 fans per game and has been losing money for at least the last several years. Even with the future of the town’s only minor league franchise in serious jeopardy, Batavia still ranks in the top 20 percent of all markets at 48th.
Go figure.
It turns out that the longevity of the franchise, called the “Tenure rank” is two-thirds of each market’s grade. As such, it overly-skews the results in Batavia’s favor, a founding member of the New York-Penn League in 1939. Seeing the Cardinals’ longest-running current affiliate, Johnson City, Tennessee, ranked at number 36 in tenure and 46th overall tends to confirm that weighting.
Going further, “Attendance rank” is a five-year view of percentage of filled seats. Amazingly, astonishly, Batavia ranks highest of all Cardinals franchises at 28th of the 239 markets in this component of the overall score.
Now, I have nothing against the Batavia market or the fine people who live there, but compare Batavia to the homes of the other Cardinals minor league franchises and see if the overall market rankings make sense to you.
Take Springfield, Missouri, for example. Forbes recently ranked the Springfield Cardinals in the top 20 of all minor league baseball franchises in value. Yet, the market barely cracked Street & Smiths top 100 at only 99th-best.
Another way to look at it: If the Batavia market is so strong, why is the team doing so poorly?
Conversely, why is Springfield so successful if their market is so weak?
| Rank | Market | Tenure | Attendance | Economy |
| 31 | Quad Cities (Ill, Iowa) | 21 | 45 | 33 |
| 46 | Johnson City, Tenn. | 36 | 83 | 52 |
| 48 | Batavia, N.Y. | 42 | 28 | 55 |
| 99 | Springfield, Mo. | 107 | 20 | 109 |
| 127 | Palm Beach County, Fla | 116 | 163 | 140 |
Source: Street & Smith’s SportsBusiness Journal
Note that Memphis does not appear on the list because of their major league status due to their NBA team, the Grizzlies.
To see the rankings of all 239 minor league markets, click here.
Its an odd survey. One of its statistical wrinkles is some towns are evaluated based on multiple franchise including other sports, rather than focused on baseball alone. One of the lowest rank cities is Richmond, capitol of Virginia, which supports a AAA baseball team. Richmond is a great town for minor league ball, so its revealing that it shows up at the bottom.
This rating system would seemingly reward a team which has a small ballpark with fewer seats that need to be filled. That does not necessarily make much sense.
There is probably too much weighting toward franchises with a long history (tenure). This could hurt Springfield too, since it may be a recent franchise.
Batavia might be doing better with proactive promotion of the team by the Rochester Red Wings, who own them. Batavia has had a franchise for decades and people assume the team will always be there. The Wings have not aggressively promoted the team to get the market fired up about coming out to a game or getting the casual fan to come to the park. I’m not sure that many are aware that Batavia runs the risk of losing the team.
Batavia is a great town in the middle of economically strapped Western New York–if the Wings stop acting like fans will come on their own and actually put forth the outside promotion effort that some other NYP League teams do, they will come.
Welcome, WNYFAN. Here’s hoping you have a reason to stay around here next season and beyond!
How might a study of best markets be used?
Seems to me if properly constructed, it could be a good guide for a franchise owner looking for a possible relocation site. Yet these rankings as-is would be worthless for that. Worse, it could easily lead to inaccurate conclusions.
Brian, I think you are focusing on the wrong flaw in the study. The attendance ranking must be relative to market size given Batavia’s high ranking. (20). Even so, if Batavia ranks 20th in attendance and is losing as much money as it is, there seems to be something wrong with that part of the study as well. I realize that much of minor league revenue is not directly attendance based but promotions often succeed based on attendance so their certainly is a correlation.
As the input from WNY suggests, inept management can fail in a good market . A franchise owner with strong management might use the study to look for a place with a good longevity rank but poor recent results, suggesting bad management in a good market.
WNYFAN is right on with his comments! Things do need to change for next season or it may be our last. Im new to this site and hope to make many friends here. I also will be looking for more feedback about what the Batavia Muckdogs can do to build attendance and keep the team here where it belongs!!! Established 1939!!!! Batavia Baseball forever!!! Also want to thank Brian Walton for all his help getting my computer to work with this site! Looking forward to many more posts here!