Baseball attendance down, again
LarkinCollector
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and from another article, possibly the finest journalistic verbiage I've seen in a while "The league’s front office, represented by anthropomorphized wet blanket Rob Manfred,"
Present some good baseball with interesting players and they will come.
For example, the Phillies 2019 attendance is way up from 2018.
Too bad, there was nothing better than a day or evening at the ballpark.
I think it is more a financial situation for most fans rather than a lack of interest in baseball. A poor product also contributes to bad attendance. It has just become to expensive for fans to go to games. The ticket prices aren't the problem. It's the price of parking, food and drinks, clothes/memorabilia/etc.
Think about it, there are 81 home games a year. Even the most die hard fans aren't going to go to half the games simply due to work, family, other obligations, etc. If you live in the area of 45 minutes to 2 hours away, you really aren't going to that many games simply because of travel time. So I can see how filling a 40,000 seat stadium nightly will be difficult even if the ticket prices, parking, food, etc were cheap. Now make all of that expensive and I can REALLY see why teams are not filling their stadiums.
Until teams start making everything more affordable, and things around the stadium become more affordable (ie. hotels, parking, restaurants/bars, transport/etc.) then attendance will continue to suffer.
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In Atlanta I hit the Braves day game a couple weeks ago. Only the 2nd time in 2 years I've been to that new stadium. Tickets are stupid expensive unless you get the standing room only ones, and then food/drink is outrageous. Parking is ridiculous and quite inconvenient compare to both the old Fulton County and Turner Field parks.
In comparison, the Mercedes Benz stadium (Falcons/United) and also the State Farm Arena (Hawks) have both made a point to have it affordable to eat/drink there. $2 hot dogs, $3 pizza slices, $7 beers, $3 cokes. Falcons tix are still high, but there were tons available cheap last year - we had lots of emptys at every game. United, my season tix for 2 seats for the whole season (17 home games) cost ~$26/ea. The bang for the buck there is huge, as are the crowds - #1 in MLS, #9 in the world last year...the world!
With 80+ games to fleece fans, you'd think the baseball would be cheaper.
This was my view Saturday.
These were $88 tix for the Braves. Up by the Chic Fil-A sign thing is where you can get SRO tix for like $8 I think.
The best seat in the house is about 12 feet away from the big screen in my lazy boy!
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
Only idiots attend Pirates home games. Worst owner in baseball. MLB is a joke
IT CAN'T BE A TRUE PLAYOFF UNLESS THE BIG TEN CHAMPIONS ARE INCLUDED
Can he be worse than the Pohlad's who own the Twins?
On topic, the games are horribly paced and ridiculously expensive. I don't go if I get free tickets, so for me it's not the money.
I refuse to pay for cable/satellite. Why pay anything for garbage?
Whatever the face value of the ticket is , try paying just that. I don't mind paying $40 for a $40 ticket. Somehow they are only on stub hub though and they cost $80 . If a dude on landsdowne street had a $40 ticket 10 minutes before game time I might buy it if I really wanted to go in. He might get arrested or I might but stubhub is somehow allowed to charge $80 .
I used to walk up to that gate if I was in town and see if I could buy a ticket at the window but I gave up on that a long time ago.
You could go to a Bruins game the same way, if you were at North Station just go by the window and see what you could get. The window wouldn't even be open now . The greedy owners want to sell every ticket to a ticket service in a day . The ticket service hugely inflates the ticket price . Everybody wins right? Except one day its all going to crash down on their heads.
End stage capitalism , 26 greedy middlemen on every transaction
I haven’t bought tickets to a Sox game since 1995
I grew up in Denver in the 1950's-1970's.
No major league team at that time. Only the AAA Denver Bears. The Bears played in the old Mile High Stadium, 60,000+ seat home of the Denver Broncos.
During the summer there was always a Bears home game on July 4th, with a fireworks show after the game. My family and I would go see one baseball game per year and that was on July 4th. Not really to see the Bears play ball. Instead it was to see the fireworks show after the game. As a result baseball games were simply not part of growing up for me.
I played little league one season when I was 10. I was tall, skinny, uncoordinated and could not play a lick. I struck out constantly and really did not like the experience.
As a result, baseball was not an activity that I grew up with and enjoyed. Still do not get excited about it today. At best I will watch a little of the WS. I have probably been to less than 20 MLB games in my life. Many people I talk with are not die hard fans of baseball either.
When I have attended MLB games, most of the time it ends up being that my attention to what is happening on the field wanders. I end up having conversations with people sitting next to and around me.
One thing about MLB games is that it provides an opportunity for people to step off the treadmill of daily life and actually enjoy a few hours just "being chill" and conversing with others.
The time, and expense of attending any sports event is significant. I can see how many choose to avoid going to a game and instead watch it from home.
I attend about 35 minor league games a year (we have season tickets - there are 38 home games and I attend almost every game). I found myself letting my attention wander several years ago and I didn't like that. So now I bring a tablet and use an app on it to keep score. That keeps me focused on the game. And I end up answering questions for the people around me, which frequently includes scouts.
Is the pace of the games any better than the Major League?
if you use a tablet instead of a pencil and paper you are a poser. In fact even owning a tablet is questionable
I can live with that.
Not really. Average game is 3 hours. One major difference, though, is that there are very few pitching changes in the middle of innings.
3 hours is still a long time, but it sounds like the pace of the game is a little better.
I actually don't care if a game lasts a long time as long as it moves along. HATE all the standing around.