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Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Attendance is down
Neil points out to Sean’s page. Through 237 games this year, attendance is 6.7 million fans. Through those teams 237 home games last year (matching on each team’s home games), attendance is 6.9 million fans.
Attendance is down 2.4%. Expect political-speak. Terms like “it’s colder”, “season opened a week earlier”, “good teams are having bad seasons”, “not controlled for day of week”, “the economy is hitting us too”, and so on.
Don’t expect things like “ticket prices have gone up, and fans are voting with their wallets”. As Neil notes in his article:
Similar trends are starting to show up in MLB: the Yankees quietly introduced $5 days last year, the Mets somewhat less quietly offered half-price tickets for all mid-week home games, and several teams are now offering discounted kids' tickets. At the very least, it seems that, after years of wondering when teams would hit a ceiling for how much cash they could shake loose from fans, the ticket price wave may finally have crested. That would be great news for fans who've increasingly found themselves without the wherewithal to afford seats anywhere below the rafters—though it could also put an end to the rising-tide-lifts-all-boats prosperity that has helped create labor peace in baseball for the last decade, leading to the kind of mayhem we're now seeing in the NBA contract talks. But hey, you can't make a revolution without breaking a few low-attendance records.
(*) No idea on the number.
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