Last year, on May 25, 2017, Major League Baseball was down over 206,000 in attendance. It looked like a trend was going to continue. As it turned out the shrinkage in attendance abated a bit and by October 2, at the end of the regular season, I wrote the following:
The regular Major League Baseball season was finished yesterday and the won and lost records have been published in the newspapers. The Division winners and the Wild Card teams will begin the post season tomorrow. But, how is baseball doing at the turnstiles? This season ML Baseball drew 72,670,423 fans, 489,251 less than 2016.
Other than four teams: Atlanta, Cleveland, Colorado. Milwaukee which drew over 1,535,413, the rest of the other 26 teams lost over 2 million fans. Basically 17 out of 30 teams had lower attendance. The Yankees drew 83,561 more fans and grew last year’s attendance to 3,146,966. Their cross-town rivals, the Mets attendance lost 329,000. The Pirates and the Royals, showed drops of 329,000 and 337,000 fans. Last year, the difference between the Yanks and the Mets narrowed to 274,000 fans, the narrowest margin in years. But, with the strong run by the Yanks and the collapse of the Mets, the difference between them grew to 686,344.
Baseball attendance has actually been dropping for years, and this year’s attendance, after 672 games, or 27% of the season is down an alarming 7% or 1,437,971 fans. At this time, last year the attendance was 19.5 million and yesterday it was 18.1 million. If this trend continues, baseball could lose over 5 million fans in 2018. In actuality, 11 teams are up in game attendance and 19 are down. Those 11 teams account for an increase of 653, 000 and the other 19 have lost over 2 million.
The all-time major league record for attendance was 76 million in 2006, which was 5% higher than 2017. If the early season 2018 trend continues, MLB will draw 65.5 million or 11 million less than 2006, a significant drop of 15%. But, as the season moved into better weather, that trend reversed and baseball was only off 3 million or 4%. But, four teams: Astros, the Yankees, Phillies and the Brewers raised their attendance over 1,380,736. Therefore, the other 26 teams lost 4.3 million in attendance, or not good news. Of the 30 ML baseball teams, 17 lost attendance and of the 13 which gained fans, two only gained by tiny amounts.
What are the reasons? Well, this season has been plagued by horrible weather and as the season goes by, with make-ups, double-headers, or day-night games, attendance will drop for teams who are struggling. Ticket prices remain high because of very high payrolls, reflective of moronic, long-term contracts, which are guaranteed. Baseball is investing billions into contracts that are indefensible. Games are way too long, but that innately is not the problem. The rise in strike outs, the multiple pitcher changes and the infield shift is ruining the game.
For the 12th consecutive season, Major League Baseball is going to set a record for strikeouts. The new marks are not simply incremental, either. In 2008, hitters struck out 32,884 times. In 2018 the strikeout pace continued and at the end of 2018 the total was 41,207 times, which again broke the record of 40,104 set last year. This is a game careening toward a reckoning borne of inaction, and when nearly 23 percent of plate appearances end with a third strike, the culprit is clear.
It is no surprise, with MLB’s laissez-faire approach to strikeouts that the MLB batting average has cratered to .248. The only two worse seasons in the game’s history were 1908, in the heart of the Dead Ball Era, and 1968, a year so disquieting it prompted the league to lower the mound from 15 inches to 10. Certainly this could be mildly anomalous, a function of the horrid weather, but over the last decade, the most a batting average has risen from April over the rest of the year was 8 points and the most a strikeout rate has dipped was .40 percent. April is no perfect indicator, but it does forecast trends quite well. This year was no different. Throughout the first two months the average was an anemic 241, and it did bounce back a bit.
Because, of multiple relief pitchers, throwing harder and faster than ever, hitting for average as continued to drop as players are thus swinging for the fences. This season is no different, strikeouts and walks are on a record pace, but homeruns, which set a major league record of 6105, are actually down significantly, to 5585 from a very aggressive pace for the first few weeks of the season. Part of the hitting decline is the infield shift, based on computer statistics, relating to each players proclivity to hit to a specific field. In 2011 there were 2357 shifts and last year it had grown to 26,705. In fact, it works. There was a slight decline in shifts from 2016, but that could be attributed to less ground balls.
Baseball is also facing another existential threat. In all of major league sports, corporations and partnerships pay own 60% of the season tickets, or weekend packages of games. As long as all these tickets are used by someone, baseball is happy. The reams would rather have a fan, who is given a “free” set of seats (compt) than have a regular customer. The fan, in a seat he has not paid for, is much more willing to buy food, programs, yearbooks and souvenirs. But, as these corporate seats decline, because they are unable to give them away to their customers or their clients, there are less “free” tickets available. Why should any corporation spend money on expensive tickets to have to have them go unused or to give them to the workers in their office or the maintenance people? Aside from that, many people are now buying 55-70+ inch televisions and watching their local team or buying the Major League Baseball package and staying at home. Why pay $200 to see a game with your family, along with; $25-50 to park, and expensive hot dogs and beer?
Therefore, what can baseball do? Here are some possible solutions; limit the amount of pitchers to ten on the staff from 13 or 14, shrink the strike zone and lower the mound like MLB did after 1968, and limit the shift to 5 times per game. There too many pitching changes per game, there are too many questionable strikes and limit the shift. Those changes can help to amend some of the imbalances on the field and at bat. As for free agency, arbitration and a very powerful baseball union, they are probably here to stay. MLB should make the salary “cap” on team payroll lower, make the penalties for exceeding the cap higher, and not offer contracts longer than five years. This will limit team losses on terrible contracts! With guaranteed, almost life-time contracts, what incentive is therefore for a player to really produce? There should be more “affordable” day games to attract younger fans and families. There are other reasons, especially the proliferation of foreign ballplayers, who many fans do not relate to. That is a very thorny issue, which can raise issues of racism of nativism. But, with all the tens of millions of American-bred players, MLB has a record of 27% foreign born athletes. All these are factors in the decline of a sport, which is very expensive to attend, even though there are 81 home games to attend, and almost every “home” team can be viewed on local or cable television!
May 20, 2018 Baseball attendance after 672 games down 1,437,971- 2,140 per game
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October 2, 2018 2,430 3,007,525 1,235
Major League Baseball attendance dropped 4 percent this year, continuing a steady decline for “America’s Pastime.” It’s the lowest league-wide attendance since 2003 and the largest single-season drop in a decade.
What does that mean for a team’s bottom line? Bloomberg News crunched some numbers to get a better understanding. While some clubs saw a jump in attendance, 17 of the 30 franchises sold fewer tickets than they did last year. Using average ticket prices from Team Marketing Report that comes to about $93.7 million in lost ticket revenue in 2018.
The Yankees led the AL in attendance with 3,482,805 and the Dodgers, the NL with 3,857,500. As for the Yankee attendance, it went up 327,817, while the Met attendance slumped by 235,627. In 2016 after lagging the Yankee attendance by over 1 million in 2013, the gap in 2016 narrowed to 273,803, the closest in many years. But this year the gap widened again to 1,257,860.