Lately baseball writers have been looking far and wide to figure out what is keeping fans away from ballparks this year. Poor weather is the most often blamed culprit, thanks to 30-and-counting rainouts this season, 9 more than the entire total in 2010. Frank McCourt is also shouldering much of the blame, since the malaise hovering over the Dodgers is driving fans away from Chavez Ravine. Worse, the optics of ballparks with much worse (unannounced) turnstile counts than ticket sales makes the problem that much more apparent.
MLB isn’t alone in this regard. The NFL posted two straight annual attendance declines before bouncing back last year. NBA attendance has been flagging while the NHL has surged post-lockout. With the economy still spotty in many places, on-site pro sports consumption is considered something of a luxury for many consumers, making long-term commitments a tough sell in tough times.
We’re just past the quarter pole of the season, so I figured it was a good time to take a look at this. I’ve sampled off attendance statistics throughout the league, cutting off the last two seasons at May 20, 2010 and yesterday, respectively. The high number of rainouts this year and the generally irregular nature of the schedule makes it difficult to get a completely even comparison, so this was as close as I could get. While the Dodgers are the obvious trending team, when you look at the table below you might see something different.
Gains for last year’s two World Series participants, Texas and San Francisco, have more than made up for the Dodgers’ decline. In fact, the top five gainers have surpassed the losses incurred by the top five losers. Yet league attendance has gone down nearly 1% per game. The Dodgers are part of the economic foundation of the league, and once McCourt is rightfully ousted and a another owner enters the picture, the team’s attendance will be well on its way to recovery. So what’s the real problem?
If anything, the problem is the number of no-shows. Only the league and the teams know the actual number of people entering each stadium. If the announced crowd is double that of the actual number of people who show up, that could add up hundreds of thousands lost each game in terms of concessions and merchandise revenue. Take the A’s, for instance. The last two crowds were announced to be over 10,000, even though it was abundantly clear that far less than 10,000 were present. 5,000 no-shows x $10 per fan spent = $50,000. The A’s are used to this, so they staff accordingly for it and make it up on the back end thanks to revenue sharing. On the other hand, the Dodgers might have as many as 20,000 no-shows for a home date. 20,000 no-shows x $10 per fan spent = $200,000, and that might be conservative. Get 50 home dates like that, and suddenly the Dodgers have lost $10 million over the course of the season. If there’s anything that should provide impetus for Bud Selig to act on getting the Dodgers settled ASAP, that’s it.
As for the weather, that’s going to remain a tricky issue as the season progresses. The May 11 A’s-Rangers rainout had only one realistic makeup date thanks to complexities within the schedule. That date was July 7, which was confirmed earlier this week. Since teams can’t play more than 20 dates in a row and off days are scheduled to prevent that, putting a makeup date in one of those late season off days creates a risk of playing that kind of really long streak. The unbalanced schedule doesn’t help either because there’s no guarantee that one team will play an interdivisional opponent late in the season in a way that a makeup game can be accommodated. Worse, rainouts that are made up the following day as part of a doubleheader aren’t counted as part of attendance, which makes them a net loss on their own. Teams in the Midwest and East Coast are going so far as to preemptively postpone games, with upset fans reporting that the actual conditions at the cancelled game time weren’t as bad as feared.
We could run into a situation in which this season, which is to end on a Wednesday (September 28), may be strung out one or two days later to properly account for all teams in contention fulfilling a 162-game schedule. That would incredibly ironic because this season started on March 31/April 1 to ensure that the regular season part ended early and the postseason wouldn’t stretch too far into November. Looks like Selig and the competition committee might run into a solution for the rainouts that doesn’t solve their postseason problem. Maybe Selig is looking forward to a prolonged NFL lockout, which would cause MLB to be the only major pro sport on broadcast TV come November (NBA/NHL are relegated to cable then, and the NBA may also be in a lockout).
newballpark.org 
Yikes. At this pace only six teams will break 3 million fans. Also 13 of the 30 teams (43.33%) will not break 2 million fans. At the current pace the majority of teams (16 out of 30) won’t make it to 2.25 million fans this year.
@925A’sFan – That 81st game makes a difference. To hit the 3 million mark a team needs to average 37,037. Last year 9 teams achieved that milestone, right now it looks like 6. However we can normally expect a roughly 10% increase across the board as the weather warms up and throughout the summer. 18-22 teams can hit 2 million, as of now the A’s would not be one of them.
Good. Baseball survived for over 100 years prior to the 1990’s without sellouts being expected, so I think they can survive a little downturn. Maybe some ticket price decreases are in order.
I do find it strange that many on this site and elsewhere have blamed low paid “attendance” numbers on Stubhub’s convenience and sales of seats below face value cutting down on advance and walk-up single-game sales. Now ML says that no-shows are inflating the “attendance”. Part of me says that it can’t be had both ways, but maybe it can be. Maybe there are just that many tickets either not being used or being sold below (or significantly below) face value. Makes one wonder why some people are season-ticket holders, and whether that will change in future years.
@Brian – No-shows aren’t deflating or inflating attendance. The statistic has been paid attendance for nearly 20 years, longer for the AL. The problem is lost revenue when the no-shows aren’t there. That info doesn’t show up until after the audits are done in November, and it doesn’t get much pub unless there’s a leak or press release.
Only 30k in LA against the Giants; 20k in Balty against NYY.
interesting article in WSJ not too long ago about the next generation of kids losing interest in baseball as a sport. Participation in LL is down by 25%—kids are choosing soccer, hockey, and lacrosse now where there is much more action—while I dont want to be an alarmist I think that someone in baseball ought to take note—kids who dont play baseball are less inclined to be fans of the sport going forward—I can see in my own 4 kids that my youngest who is 14 moved away from baseball to travel soccer, hockey and football once he finished LL at 12—-we have season tix to Sharks and A’s–he has little to no interest in going to A’s games but all over the hockey—-
Maybe we should look at the positive in the graph and note that our attendance is up, we’re not last, and only an average of 250 fans per game away from moving up another 2 notches. Baby steps, let’s rally around the team and increase attendance. Since there’s apparently no new news, just go to a game and enjoy what we have.