MLB’s recent press release trumpeted the following:
“Major League Baseball announced today that despite the nation’s worst economic downturn in 80 years, the 30 Clubs drew 73,418,479 fans during the 2009 championship season, producing the fifth largest total attendance in MLB history.”
Here are the numbers they left out of the release:
| MLB | attendance | YTY |
| 2009 | 73,418,479 | -6.6% |
| 2008 | 78,588,004 | -1.2% |
| 2007 | 79,503,175 | 4.6% |
| 2006 | 76,042,787 | 1.5% |
| 2005 | 74,926,174 | 2.6% |
| 2004 | 73,022,969 |
In other words, MLB had its second consecutive down year, its largest decline and lowest total since 2004.
Buried in a later paragraph, they slipped in the bad news, but even found a way to fudge that.
“Because of the economy, this year’s total is 6.6 percent less than last year’s total, but is actually only 5.2 percent lower when accounting for the reduced capacities of the two new ballparks in New York. The total number of seats available at Citi Field and Yankee Stadium is approximately 1.5 million fewer than at the old ballparks.”
Let’s see. When the new parks were in planning, the spin was that the new facilities would operate at higher capacity for every game, therefore increasing season-long attendance.
That is precisely what happened in St. Louis, albeit in a better economic environment. Despite the new Busch being smaller than the old, a new club home season attendance record of 3,552,180 was set in 2007 in its first full season at maximum capacity. In all fairness, the club was also coming off a world championship.
Now the story changes for the MLB spinmasters.
Of course, not mentioned is how higher per-seat revenue projections from the new parks panned out since revenues are not reported.
Not bound by having to be politically sensitive, USA Today calls blasts this year’s attendance decline across MLB as being the “biggest single-season loss since Harry Truman was president” in a non-strike-related season.
USA Today notes 2/3 of the 30 MLB teams saw a year-to-year drop, including the Cardinals, though the club seems delighted to have come in at 3,343,252, a decline of 2.6 percent from 2008. That was actually a smaller decline than the 3.4 percent drop the team saw from their record-breaking 2007 to 2008.
In contrast to last season when the Cardinals’ percentage decline was greater than the MLB total, their decline this year was less than the entirety of MLB, -2.6 percent versus -6.6 percent.
There was another important benefit. By blowing away their original 2009 projection of 3,000,000 by 11.4 percent, reaching 3,343,252, the club states the revenue from the increase in ticket sales enabled them to make in-season trades for Mark DeRosa and Matt Holliday.
| Cardinals | Attendance | YTY | |
| 2009 | 3,343,252 | -2.6% | |
| 2008 | 3,432,917 | -3.4% | |
| 2007 | 3,552,180 | 4.3% | |
| 2006 | 3,407,114 | -3.7% | Busch III |
| 2005 | 3,538,948 | 16.1% | Busch II |
| 2004 | 3,048,427 |
The attendance statistics are nice to see. There has been the most significant recession since the 1930s (by no means over) and attendance across MLB fell 6.6% in one year. This is unsurprising. When the economy contracts, people will spend less money on discretionary activities, like eating at restaurants or on travel or baseball games. The facts are in agreement with common sense expectations.
Its interesting how the Cards had a peak in 2007. They were down 209,000 attendees during a division winning year in 09, about 2.5 thousand per game, on average.
It would be prudent again this off-season to make conservative assumptions about the economy next summer.
In 2008, the Cards dropped 3.4% while MLB as a whole dropped only 1.2%.
Over the past two years, attendence for the Cards has dropped more than 6 percent, while MLB has dropped more than 7.8 percent. So the Cards fans have done a bit better than the fans of MLB as a whole, but the selling of seats is down, in keeping with the overall contraction of the economy, falling values for assets like homes, and rising unemployment. Not surprising, even though last winter, fans posting on the Internet were hard on Mo for not spending more.
Thus far the only ML franchise to seek bankruptcy protection are the Texas Rangers. Former President Dubya Bush bought a home in Dallas near to his former business partner who gave Alex Rodriguez his first mega contract and who engineered the financial fall of the Rangers.
It tends to be said that the Cards depend more on ticket sales than do major market media teams that can earn money via cable tv subscriptions. So even if ticket sales for the Cards are off a little less than for MLB as a whole, the Cards may be relatively more affected by reduced ticket sales.
Ticket statistics seem important. Most teams do not report their revenues and all their costs. One of the few public statistics that is an indicator of their economic condition is ticket sales. Declining ticket sales may imply weak off-season demand for free agent vets. Since they are richer than most Americans, they will get no tears from me.
Jumbo – technically I believe the Cubs have filed for bankruptcy.
Right, I think they are going through bankruptcy to wash themselves free of the larger bankruptcy that is the Chicago Tribune.
The Tribune issue was a crazy one. Because of poor revenues in newspapers, the Tribune kept changing editors and cutting staff of the LA Times and Chicago Tribune. Finally to raise their stock price, a Chicago financier, known as the Grave Dancer, concocted some idea under tax law to recast the Tribune as an employer owned (ESOP) thing and saddled it with billions in debt that the reporters were going to pay off, since motivated to work harder, under the crushing indebtedness. This ended up a fiasco, since changes in the media business swamped however much harder the reporters reported. The Cubs and WGN probably did not pull down the Tribune, though I might wish they had.
The guy in Dallas hit the rocks and MLB has taken over the Rangers the way they once babysat the Exps. I have forgotten the cause of Dallas folly. Its usually massive indebtedness based on foolish optimism.