WASHINGTON 鈥� Earlier this month, Washington Post sports writer Barry Svrluga posited that the drop in baseball attendance this season was . A few days later, The Boston Globe鈥檚 Dan Shaughnessy said that 鈥�,鈥� citing many of the same reasons. MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred has spent much of his tenure discussing tinkering with the rules of the on-field product to address the league鈥檚 declining attendance.
These are the perspectives of people who watch the game every day, for work. While they may be some of the most informed when it comes to the minutiae happening on the field, they are necessarily blind to the fan perspective, because this is their job. For those who actually pay to attend games, baseball is entertainment. And the value of such entertainment isn鈥檛 measured in pitch clocks or percentage of balls put in play 鈥� it鈥檚 measured in dollars and cents.
Simply put: Major League Baseball is too expensive.
Let鈥檚 look at the other arguments first, though. After citing the drop in league batting average to .246, the lowest since 1972, Svrluga makes the specious leap to a drop in average attendance this year. Never mind that batting average has been steady, between .251 and .255 every year since 2012, all while attendance has been slowly dropping. Never mind that home runs are well up over the last few years.
鈥淭here has to be a relationship, then, between how often hitters are able to put balls in play and how willing fans are to pay to watch them try,鈥� Svrluga wrote.
To begin with, there absolutely does not have to be a relationship between these things. To draw a straight line between the two is what John Ameachi would call a deeply anecdotal connection, an observation of a single trend used as hard evidence to try to prove something far more complex.
Yes, MLB attendance is off this year, and it appears that the season-ticket base is eroding. But this is not a new trend. Barring a major reversal, this is the sixth straight year that MLB will draw fewer fans than the year before. Gross attendance has fallen every year since hitting 74,859,268 in 2012, and is well off the peak of 79,484,718 in 2007.
And yet, attendance at baseball games isn鈥檛 down everywhere. In fact, the minor leagues from 2016. The minors have drawn consistently (between 41.3 million and 42.6 million) throughout this period of MLB attendance decline, playing the exact same sport. It鈥檚 almost like the problem isn鈥檛 the actual sport at all.
As is true with nearly any question, within the sports world and without, the answer is a financial one. Back when the Nats played at RFK, the most expensive regular seat was about $45, the cheapest about $7. , the average ticket this season is more than $42, double what it was in 2007. Parking, which was far less expensive at the old digs, runs $50 at Lots B and C, just beyond the outfield wall at Nats Park. Hot dogs, beer, all of it is . For a family of four, the full cost of attendance has basically doubled since the final year at RFK.
Meanwhile, for all but the highest 20 percent of earners in the U.S. over that time. In other words, plenty of people who used to be able to take themselves or their family to the ballpark simply can鈥檛 anymore.
Games are also much more accessible away from the ballpark. In the pre-regional sports network era, unless your team had a contract with a local television station, the only way to watch games from home were if they got picked up by a network broadcast, either NBC, ESPN or FOX. Even teams that did have local deals wouldn鈥檛 have them for the full 162 games 鈥� often far fewer. The broadcast availability is great, especially for those who don鈥檛 live particularly close to the ballpark . But it also devalues the live experience when you can stay at home and watch the game for free instead of spending a minor fortune on exorbitantly priced parking, paying for tickets and hugely inflated concessions, and managing a whole family, some of which might not be nearly as interested in the baseball as you are.
Most fans likely don鈥檛 notice the drop in hits and rise in strikeouts, because most fans aren鈥檛 watching every single pitch. Many don鈥檛 arrive to the Nationals Park until well after first pitch, and/or leave early, whether to beat traffic, put the kids to bed, or just get a jump on the foot traffic at Bluejacket or The Salt Line. They may be derided by their fellow fans for such practices, but the simple fact is that the baseball itself is not the priority for a good number of people who attend baseball games. It is an entertainment product, like anything else, and the value of the ballpark experience 鈥� which includes far more than simply the action on the field 鈥� is the most important factor in play here.
Shaughnessy laments that baseball’s stars are increasingly anonymous, which is true. Of course, the league hasn’t done itself any favors in that regard, preferring to issue cease and desist letters for everything from , to , to to — you know, things fans actually enjoy and that endear them to the game.聽Oh, did I mention Manfred blamed the game’s biggest star, Mike Trout, for not marketing himself enough聽over All-Star Weekend?
Both Shaughnessy and Svrulga address tanking, which is an argument with a bit more merit. Yes, tanking in the standings also tanks attendance. The problem isn鈥檛 isolated to a couple teams throughout the last decade, though. Basically a full third of the league punted on free agency this year, signaling to fans no intent to compete, to put a credible product on the field. Weigh that front office apathy against the continually increasing demand of fans鈥� money, and it鈥檚 no stunner why people aren鈥檛 showing up for their home games.
But Svrluga is making the argument it鈥檚 why those teams won鈥檛 draw on the road. This makes no sense. Legacy teams like the Yankees, Red Sox and Cubs draw even when they鈥檙e bad, while few others ever do, even if they鈥檙e good. The die-hard transplants will still go, regardless of the state of the team. I鈥檝e seen an A鈥檚 game in Baltimore nearly every year since I鈥檝e been in D.C. And again 鈥� minor league attendance is up. Many times those fans have no idea who鈥檚 even playing. The tankiest team of all 鈥� the Miami Marlins 鈥� have the ninth-best road draw in the league, at better than 30,000. The Texas Rangers, with veteran stars like Adrian Beltre and Cole Hamels, are dead last, under 25,000. A lack of recognizable veteran players on visiting teams is not the problem.
Like Manfred, Svrluga鈥檚 and Shaughnessy鈥檚 microscopic analyses of the details of the game are keeping them from understanding the far more seismic forces in play. If you鈥檙e spending hours poring over minute shifts in the pace of play and trying to squeeze concrete conclusions from them, you鈥檙e missing the forest for the trees entirely. To the average fan, baseball isn鈥檛 any more or less boring than it鈥檚 always been in a way that determines their ticket-purchasing habits. But it鈥檚 a whole lot more expensive. And, increasingly, it鈥檚 just not worth the cost of attendance.
