Passan: Tanking Killing Baseball?

[weams]

https://www.yahoo.com/sports/10-degrees-mlbs-enormous-attendance-drop-due-bad-weather-something-far-worse-baseball-152051024.html

Quote

Inside front offices all spring, officials wondered whether the significant number of teams that neither spent in free agency nor harbored realistic notions of contention would have a tangible, negative effect on fans attending games. And while, yes, it is April, and, yes, it certainly is frickin’ freezing in here, Mr. Bigglesworth, and, yes, it is a small sample of games, the disintegration of crowd size around the game is alarming enough to track.

Compared to last season at this juncture, the Boston Red Sox are down about 2,500 fans a game. For the Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals, it’s nearly 5,000. The Cleveland Indians’ average crowd has dropped more than 5,000, the Texas Rangers’ more than 7,000 and the Pittsburgh Pirates more than 7,500. The Toronto Blue Jays, Detroit Tigers and Kansas City Royals each are in the 8,000-fan range, and the Miami Marlins are pushing 10,000. The most severe is the Baltimore Orioles, who have played six games at home and are at almost 16,000 fewer per.

Even if some are obviously weather-related, the numbers are nevertheless staggering. The average crowd of 27,532 over the 221 MLB games played this season is about 2,700 fans per game lower than last year through the same point. Over the course of a full season, that would amount to a drop of more than 6.5 million fans.

Now, the last time the league suffered through an April with more postponements than this was 2007.

 

[LookitsPuck]

The weather has sucked and so has the team. That explains the Orioles. They were poor last year...and losing breeds disinterest. Now, there is certainly an element of disinterest in live sports to instead watch it on TV...and that's been the case for years now. But I think the O's issue is weather and poor performance...and a poor season ticket base due to last minute acquisitions.

[VaBird1]

4 minutes ago, birdwatcher55 said:

Are people in Houston tired of baseball and think it's dying? They wrote the book on tanking. LOL. Passan needs to find his way in the New World.

A better question though is why can’t the fourth largest city in the US support two teams?  

[esmd]

The Red Sox, Cubs, Cardinals, and Indians are all contending teams, so that would seem to contradict his contention that tanking is the cause of the drop in attendance, no?  Miami, sure.  Us, to some extent since we waited until the last minute to do anything substantial.

IMO, it's the crappy April weather.  Games are being played in terrible baseball conditions all over, and baseball fans don't want to freeze their tails off.

[bpilktree]

Another dumb article by Yahoo.  Last year in the first 6 games we played 2 vs the Jays and then a weekend series vs the Yanks and a Friday night vs the Red Sox.  This year we had a weekend series vs the Twins and then a weekday series against the Jays.  The fact that after opening day(which were both about the same in attendce) this year with 2 Twins games and 3 Jays games vs last year 1 vs Jays, 3 vs Yanks and 1 vs Red Sox with 4 of the 5 weekend series shows a difference.

[weams]

33 minutes ago, VaBird1 said:

A better question though is why can’t the fourth largest city in the US support two teams?  

That is a huge question for me. 

[Aglets]

36 minutes ago, VaBird1 said:

A better question though is why can’t the fourth largest city in the US support two teams?  

Well the 3rd largest US city (Chicago) really only 'supports' one of its teams right?  

The other team is just kinda there afaik.

[VaBird1]

13 minutes ago, Aglets said:

Well the 3rd largest US city (Chicago) really only 'supports' one of its teams right?  

The other team is just kinda there afaik.

I think people still go see the Cubs, but it’s hard to tell because they are in the National League.

[Aglets]

13 minutes ago, VaBird1 said:

I think people still go see the Cubs, but it’s hard to tell because they are in the National League.

It's actually pretty easy to look up many things nowadays..........including baseball attendance numbers.   I was joking about how few people in Chicago seem to care about the White Sox.

The Cubs drew 3.2M fans last year............the white sox drew 1.6M......... literally one half.

In 2005 the White Sox won 99 games and the World Series........and the Cubs still drew more people while having a losing record.

[jabba72]

Weather and ticket prices and cable TV are all conspiring against attendance. If every team dropped ticket prices so anyone can afford to go to numerous games per year attendance would go up. 

[Chavez Ravine]

3 minutes ago, Aglets said:

It's actually pretty easy to look up many things nowadays..........including baseball attendance numbers.   I was joking about how few people in Chicago seem to care about the White Sox.

The Cubs drew 3.2M fans last year............the white sox drew 1.6M......... literally one half.

In 2005 the White Sox won 99 games and the World Series........and the Cubs still drew more people while having a losing record.

I was listening to the Rays announcers during their game last Monday against the White Sox....the one where the grounds crew had to improvise a snow plow to clear the field. They said that among all the obvious reasons why there were only a couple hundred people watching the game was the fact that the local media barely acknowledges that the White Sox exist.  They said that morning all the news stations reported on the Cub's opener being cancelled but failed to mention the White Sox game was still on.  The only mention of the White Sox by the media they had heard since being in town was by a sportscaster who on Sunday mused why anybody in their right mind would ever go see a White Sox game...let alone in such weather.

[Tony-OH]

I don't care how good your team is, if it's under 50 degrees it's not going to draw a lot of baseball fans out to the games. I think the biggest cause is the early start to the season due to the collective bargaining agreement way more than any kind of "tanking". 

As for the Orioles, last place followed by a winter in which they did nothing by the time season ticket holders normally renew or new plans our bought, mixed in with some awful weather is an absolute recipe for disaster.

I do think the Orioles will be a hard sell though. The demographics for baseball fans is getting older and the Orioles are doing themselves no favors by blacking out streaming which is the core way those millenials and generation Z fans want to watch games. In fact, I'd argue even older fans would watch more games if they weren't tethered to their TVs.

Camden Yards is still a great place to watch ballgames, but the food has taken a noticeable turn down in my opinion (Even the last few times I've gotten Boogs) and the parking situation makes fans walk through some sketchy areas. 

If i were the Orioles, I'd honestly make parking on the B/C lots free Monday-Thursday in order to try and get more people into the stadium. 

Regardless, with the Orioles struggling so badly to start the year, and the fact this team is getting absolutely beat up by the "good teams" they are going to be a hard sell even when the weather warms up. Going to Camden Yards is still a fun event in my eyes, but I can see already in my kids that their desire to go to games has lessened from where it was when I was their age. 

No part of that was there were a lot less games on TV so going to the Stadium was the only way to "watch" the Orioles when the were home.

Part of it was there was a lot less entertainment sources back then as well. Now with TV shows/movies on demand (Netflix and on demand), video games, sports bars, craft breweries, outdoor activities/sports and other sport leagues with overlapping seasons, it's only going to be tougher for MLB to keep it's fan base excited about going out to games.

[Aglets]

20 minutes ago, Chavez Ravine said:

I was listening to the Rays announcers during their game last Monday against the White Sox....the one where the grounds crew had to improvise a snow plow to clear the field. They said that among all the obvious reasons why there were only a couple hundred people watching the game was the fact that the local media barely acknowledges that the White Sox exist.  They said that morning all the news stations reported on the Cub's opener being cancelled but failed to mention the White Sox game was still on.  The only mention of the White Sox by the media they had heard since being in town was by a sportscaster who on Sunday mused why anybody in their right mind would ever go see a White Sox game...let alone in such weather.

Sounds about right.  Such a strange thing to me.........i'm not sure if it's just pure apathy or if it's actually disgust on some level that Chicago people have for their own AL team.

[jabba72]

7 minutes ago, Aglets said:

Sounds about right.  Such a strange thing to me.........i'm not sure if it's just pure apathy or if it's actually disgust on some level that Chicago people have for their own AL team.

What was the problem in the 70's, when the Orioles couldnt draw anyone?

[jtschrei]

Attendance is down. That is a fact. 

I would be curious to know how much season ticket packages are down. When the Yard was packed in the 90s, it felt like companies had tons of seats. 

Agree with Tony. It does seem foolish that MASN doesn't have streaming options. And I would give away parking to get more butts in the seats. People at home don't like watching stadiums that are 1/8 full.