April Attendance Was a Mixed Bag for Baseball
A year ago, warning bells rang out across the league as attendance dropped precipitously in April, down nearly 3,000 fans per game from the previous season and about 2,500 fans per game from the April average from 2014 through 2017. The rough April came on the heels of a 2017 season that finished rather meagerly as well. From 2014 through 2016, total average attendance at the end of the season gained over 1,300 fans on average compared to the April numbers. But in 2017, the league added fewer than 500 fans per game in the summer months, ruining a once-promising season at the gate. A lackluster summer followed by a disappointing April was worrisome, though the weather might have been a factor. As it turned out, the summer made up a lot of the ground lost in April, but attendance still fell by 1,237 fans per game. This April has been met by slightly better weather, but attendance has not improved, and without a great summer, we might see a pretty big loss at the end of the season.
Before comparing previous seasons, here’s home attendance per game by team so far this season.
We see mostly what we would expect near the top, with the Dodgers, Cardinals, and Yankees checking in with the best attendance. The Dodgers and Cardinals have claimed the top two spots at the end of the season in each of the previous six seasons except for last year when the Yankees overtook the Cardinals for second-place. Philadelphia is benefiting from a decent record a season ago and a big offseason this winter, while the Cubs and Red Sox are still doing well, though they are limited by the size of their parks when it comes to attendance. They more than make up for it with the highest prices in the game. Milwaukee is hardly seen as a large market, but Brewers fans have long done a good job supporting their team, particularly when the team is successful. The most surprising absence from the top of this list is the Giants, who averaged over 41,000 fans per game from 2011 through 2017 and still had a fairly robust 39,000 fans last season but have dropped off pretty significantly. The Giants are coming off a very good run, and it is possible their fans and stadium might insulate them a little during a rebuild, but they will have to figure out how much losing they can stomach; the Phillies had half as many fans attend games in 2015 compared to 2010, and the Giants could be facing even bigger drops the next few years.
This next graph shows the change in attendance from last April.
The Phillies created a fair bit of excitement in the offseason with trades and free agency, including signing Bryce Harper, and that excitement has translated to the box office. Nearly 200,000 more fans watched the Phillies this April compared to a year ago. The increase is bigger than the total attendance for five teams this season. A year ago, the Pirates traded away Andrew McCutchen and Gerrit Cole and saw a pretty significant attendance drop. Contending in July saw a decent increase as the season wore on and that has carried over to this season. The Yankees have seen more growth as they return to perennial contender status. Oakland and Milwaukee are seeing some gains after solid 2018 campaigns, while the Padres and Mets are seeing an uptick after making some big offseason moves.
At the other end of the graph, Houston is seeing a dip, but they were coming off a World Series win in 2017 that likely goosed attendance last year. Cincinnati not seeing more fans is a bit disappointing given their moves in the offseason. The Angels really need to start winning, though their overall attendance numbers are pretty good. Baltimore and Kansas City are seeing drops commensurate with their rebuilding status. The Twins were supposed to be good last season, but disappointed. They are off to a good start and it wouldn’t be a surprise if they end up with more fans than they did a year ago. The Blue Jays drew extremely well when they were in contention, but do much worse when they aren’t in the running. The team did see about 18,000 more fans during Vladimir Guerrero, Jr.’s debut weekend series compared to how they did for a weekend series against the Rays two weeks prior.
While the factors for attendance are numerous, it is possible that teams’ plans for rebuilding are creating more big drops than in season’s past. From 2013 through 2017, there were a total of six attendance decreases exceeding 5,000 fans per game over the previous season; there were six of those drops in 2018 alone, and we might be looking at two more this year. As for how much April numbers presage those at the end of the season, here’s how last year’s April attendance looks when compared to the end of the season.
There are some minor outliers, but April numbers tend to do a pretty good job lining up with the rest of the year if you include a small increase from the April numbers. Last season’s poor April attendance numbers were bailed out a little by good numbers the rest of the way, but that is a bit of an outlier compared to the last few seasons, as the table below shows.
| April Per Game | End of Season Per Game | Change | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | 28,900 | 30,346 | 1,446 |
| 2015 | 29,287 | 30,366 | 1,079 |
| 2016 | 28,,671 | 30,132 | 1,461 |
| 2017 | 29,430 | 29,909 | 479 |
| 2018 | 26,617 | 28,660 | 2,043 |
| 2019 | 26,361 | — | — |
If we only see an increase of 1,000 fans per game at the end of the season compared to April, baseball is going to lose more than three million fans in attendance. It’s possible slow winters have dulled early-season excitement for some fans, though some of the most active teams have seen pretty big rises this April. Some teams’ fans might be taking a wait-and-see attitude while others are simply staying away. Another factor in baseball’s overall attendance lag could be the lack of new stadiums, which tend to send attendance upward for a few years. The graph below shows attendance per game, and the number of new stadiums over the past 30 years. As new stadiums have stagnated, so has attendance.
Attendance is still well above where it was in the 1980s, and it grew by 20% in the 15 years following the strike as a new stadium was built basically every year. But those gains have stopped, and are showing some signs of decline that very well could continue this season. Whatever teams are doing, whether it is the slow winters or the lack of expected competitiveness or the price of tickets, it isn’t attracting more fans at the ballpark. The teams that are doing well this season compared to last had active winters or just won a bunch of games. The sport needs to do whatever it can to cultivate new fans and to get them out to the ballpark because without them, the television money that has made baseball less dependent on attendance will eventually dry up as well. Generating excitement about a team, through wins and activity in the offseason, is the best way to get more people to buy tickets.
Craig Edwards can be found on twitter @craigjedwards.
The Reds haven’t yet played a ‘home’ game on a Friday or Saturday night given the rainout on Opening Weekend and the ‘home’ series they played in Monterrey, Mexico, and the lone Sunday home game they played was the second coldest game in GABP history.
That may not be the whole story for why their numbers are down despite the optimistic offseason, but it’s certainly a good chunk of it.
Thanks. Hopefully that explains at least some of the drop.
Are we overselling the “excitement” from the off-season? Puig has never come close to the sky high expectations and is little more than a 1WAR contributor most seasons, Alex Wood and Tanner Roark are far from the rotation upgrades needed and the ghost of Matt Kemp is not going to make anyone think the playoffs are imminent. I understand he was hurt but Senzel is still not there and maybe the fan base just doesn’t care to watch them add middling vets and call it a contender again when it is so easy to see otherwise.
All teams need owners that spend “stupid” money like the Phils John Middleton.
Maybe not “stupid,” although these things are obviously contextual. The really interesting context, to me, is the NL-E. (Pro forma, ignoring the Marlins, who don’t get much choice right now. An observation, not a criticism.)
The boring one is the Nats. Just doing their job, and doing it well. Nothing to see here, folks, just move on. But the other three are interesting.
Do you sign a guy for $30 million a year? Well, the Phiĺlies did, and if April scales to a year, they basically got Harper for free this season. OK, twelve more to go, but an interesting way of “adding value.”
Do you sit out, like the Braves? It might make sense. They actually have that rare new stadium thing, but it’s nowhere near the metro area and we don’t yet know how potential fans will react.
Or, um, the Mets. Attendance is up, but not by much. And yet the FO approach is different, perhaps even daring. Maybe, given the NY market, the Mets can make a medium-term run at making “silly money” pay off.
Remember when Bill Clinton’s election campaign was, “It’s the economy, stupid!”
It’s the prices, stupid [owners]!
You do realize that most teams have dynamic pricing that allows certain games to only cost $5 (plus fees) a piece for a nosebleed ticket, don’t you?
You do realize that is not anything close to what he is talking about don’t you?
I don’t think the author of the original comment knows what they are talking about either. To simply blame the owners for stupid prices requires a childlike understanding of the price structure. Several factors can impact pricing. Demand is one. If the Cubs, Yankees and Red Sox are filling the stadium on a regular basis raising the prices makes sense. I have visited both Disneyland and Disney World in recent years during supposed slow times and the parks were packed. I expected to hear about increased ticket prices in the near future, and that’s exactly what happened.
Other factors that can affect ticket prices are labor costs. Did the city or state increase the minimum wage? Because we know artificial salary floors are detrimental to the employers, employees and customers. How about taxes and fees imposed by the local municipality? On top of sales taxes some areas have entertainment taxes which will increase ticket prices. Some areas will also have weekend or peak time fees for parking. There are many factors that go into ticket pricing other than owners greed.
Then you have to look at alternatives or more accurately context. A family of four can easily spend $800 to walk into Disneyland during peak times. To enter Six Flags Great America amusement park here in metro Chicago will cost a family of four $300. A steak dinner for a family of four in River North or the Chicago downtown area could easily exceed $400. A beer at the Marz brewery which is about a mile or so west of the White Sox stadium will cost you $8. A family of four can spend $40 eating at McDonalds. Attending NBA, NHL and NFL games can be just as if not more expensive than the MLB games.
If we want to bring up the US economy. it’s been terrific, particularly when compared to other countries. Canada has been near recession levels, with only .4% growth for 2018. Italy is in a recession, Germany is close and China has been on shaky economic ground for the past year or so.
GDP growth rate was 1.8. Your 0.4% is annualized 4th quarter growth. 0.1% is not a great quarter. Ontario’s was 2.2%. Job numbers fine. Toronto is humming right along.
Blue Jays however are walking out a very small payroll $70M payroll (before retained salaries of 49M). Tickets are $17 for a weekday game in the bleeders.
Promo:
-Jays are putting 1 market priced concession stand per level (3 total), rather than ~100% markup for being inside the ballpark. Get your $3 hot dog and $5 12 oz beer there (CAD). Which is approximately what you’d pay per ounce at a bar, and the hotdog street vendor 5 blocks away.
I’m not sure what the regular prices are elsewhere in the building, but last season was $12 for a 16 ounce can (common size sold everywhere).
A lot of fans are really pissed off with current management, this includes long time fans. They’ve basically come in and slashed the on-field payroll in half. Jays needed a rebuild, we were the oldest team in baseball in 2015 when they took the helm. And the farm system was aggressively traded out in 2013 and 2015. There is no fig-leaf, this is a hard rebuild.
There are a lot of little things that could add up to it. It probably doesn’t help that the Red Sox can’t really receive a post-WS bump, because there’s no room to go up.
But it’s really hard to escape the idea that this is the new normal in terms of attendance, at least until large quantities of people start making more money, baseball picks up a lot of new fans, or ticket prices change.
You can definitely juice attendance with some big offseason moves, but the game as a whole is going to have a hard time doing that because when one team brings in a star another team loses one. So when it looks like we’re at the same place we were last year, well, is that a big surprise?
We go through this every single time an article on Fangraphs goes up, but the fact remains it is outrageously expensive to take a family of four to a baseball game. And these have long-term effects on the game too, since fewer people grow up going to a baseball game and want to take their kids. This deserves a lot more than just a throwaway at the end of the article.
It’s really not that expensive if you do things right. Here’s what it typically costs me:
1 nosebleed ticket: $10.50 [$5 dynamic price for a cheap game + $4 convenience fee + $1.50 delivery fee (used to be able to print at home for free 🙁 )]
1 round-trip “event” light rail ticket: $5
1 footlong Subway sandwich (to bring into the ballpark): $7 + tax
2 20 oz. plastic bottles of soda/lemonade (to bring into the ballpark): $4 + tax
1 Gus’s soft pretzel (sold outside the ballpark): $1
1 Minute Maid soft frozen strawberry lemonade (sold inside the ballpark): $5.50
Gas to drive about 20 miles to and from the closest light rail station: ~$5
Total for 1 person: ~$38.50 (+ ~$32 for each additional person)
That’s not bad. It costs a lot more to spend the day at an amusement park. You can also subtract the cost of what dinner would’ve otherwise been.
What are you like an ownership troll? Your welfare experience is not what anyone is looking for when they go to the ballpark. A good seat at a reasonable price is the goal
Are you 12 yrs old? What does a reasonable price mean? Someone once paid me $1200 for 3 Bears/Packers tickets. Is that reasonable? The ignorance in the comment section is staggering. MLB is expensive? Without context that is a worthless comment.
This is a good point. Baseball is still by far the most inexpensive professional sporting event of the major sports to go watch. Its not even close. I am amazed what people pay to go watch NHL, NBA, and the NFL. Even the MLS is slowly sneaking up in price.
A Bears/Packers ticket is the equivalent of 10 MLB tickets, due to 162 games V 16 games.
Keep dividing by 10 – 3 tickets at $1200 in the NFL is the equivalent of 3 tickets at $120 in MLB.
Now rewrite your sentence, with the additional context of the numeric difference between NFL and MLB games – “my friend got 3 tickets for a Cubs/Brewers game for $120.” And suddenly, if you’re talking about Wrigley, you’re talking about tickets that don’t exist. So yes. It WOULD be rather reasonable, but that isn’t how baseball prices work.
I do appreciate your helpful anecdote, though, that helps illustrate the discrepancy.
Baseball SHOULD have significantly lower prices given that they expect season ticket holders to shell out for double the games as the NBA or 10x the games of the NFL. But, in fact, that is not always the case.
The average tix price in MLB is around $30 (excluding fees), so your anecdote doesn’t represent the average experience.
Yes, I theoretically could buy a nosebleed ticket where I will pay more in convenience fees than the price of the ticket, sit through an hour of traffic on each side of the game, and pay over $20 to park to watch Jason Vargas face Tanner Roark on a 45 degree Wednesday night in April through a set of binoculars when the Reds are in town, but I don’t want to. I would rather watch the game on my big screen TV and crack open a good beer that cost $1.50 a bottle. I have work in the morning and I’ll probably fall asleep by the end of the 7th inning anyway.
If I’m going to a ball game it’s for the experience. The one I outlined above isn’t enjoyable, even if it were free. What I want are seats where I can see the action (not nosebleeds) and the ability to buy some hot food and a cold beverage or two for the entire family. And when all of that costs over $350 for a family of 5, I’m priced out.
PS: I tried to go to a SFG game when they were hosting the Mets in ’14 on a weeknight – nosebleeds started at $35 for top row, so it’s not always possible to do what you outlined.
It’s not the price. The most expensive parks also draw some of the best attendance.
First, there are 10 teams that have no hopes of making the playoffs before the season even started. Their fans know that they aren’t even trying. Add a 162 game season that spans 6 months, and it’s really hard for a team to pull a surprise upset.
Second, there are some MLB teams that are in areas where baseball just doesn’t have a big interest. Baseball is a very regional sport – there’s very little anyone can do to make Miami or Minnesota regularly draw good attendance.
Competitiveness matters. If you are going to make the fan anything more than a casual attender of a handful of games, especially at high prices, you need to offer them an interesting product. That’s either a contender, or a not-quite-there young team on the rise. But if you are going to deliberately tank, and hold down younger appealing talent to manipulate service time, don’t expect fans to come out in droves.
Getting most casual fans to attend more than a single game a year would be a great accomplishment! As a serious fan, *I* only attend a handful of games a year. Not all of us can be rich or lucky enough to get season tickets, you know.
Baseball games are too expensive. Just look at the most important thing: beer. I’ve been to two games this year at SF and SD and the beer prices are outrageous. Local craft beer is $14.50, more than twice the price than if I left the stadium and walked 10 minutes to a brewery or taproom, where the game is on TV.
If you want to take a family of four to a game and pay for parking, lower box or reserve tickets, food and drinks you are looking at 400 to 600 bucks for a night out.
Another factor might be the strikeouts. Strikeouts and pitch sequencing are fun to watch on TV, not so much live.
They can be expensive if you want them to be. I have lived in Orange County and Phoenix in recent years, so ticket prices may not compare with other places, but you can get decent seats in the upper deck near the bases for about $15 each. Factor in $15 for parking, $60 bucks for 4 meals and non-alcoholic drinks, another $30 for snacks, and you can leave the stadium for about $165 for a family of 4, a far cry from $400-$600. And most stadiums let you bring food in, so you can skip the snacks altogether, and maybe even dinner. Now you’re looking at $75, which is probably close to what you pay at the movies nowadays.
I recently attended games in both NY parks, and I didn’t notice the prices for comparable tickets and food being much different from Anaheim and Arizona either.
If you’re in the Bay, and intend on going to the Coliseum 5 or more times, get an Access Membership. The beer then becomes 50% off of a $10 max price (for 20oz, on tap).
I’m a Angels fan that was living in San Jose for the last few years. I am not going to go out on a limb and say the coliseum is a nice stadium. But EVERY game I attended there I always walked away happy. It gets a lot of crap and the A’s and their loyal fans deserve better but I believe its underrated as a stadium especially with the environment the A’s fans create. All the workers there are some of the most pleasant people I ever dealt with at any sporting event.
Here’s a solution: Just don’t drink at the game! You’ll save a bunch of money, be sober enough to pay attention to the game, and your liver will thank you.
Furthermore, if cost is the issue, why the heck are you buying such good tickets?! Just get nosebleed seats on one of the nights that they’re only $5 (plus fees) each.
Meanwhile, I can get round-trip “event” light rail tickets for $5 each and just bring most of my food and drink into the ballpark.
Overall, you can take a family of four for around $130 here in St. Louis (including the price of the food you bring into the ballpark).
So your solution is to sit in the nosebleeds and not have anything to drink. Sounds like an exhilarating experience. No wonder people are choosing to stay home or watch at a bar.
OMG! It so simple! Also, why bring your whining brat kids who will want nachos and a Coke? Just go by yourself! If you get thirsty, just get tap water from the restroom!
Re: Milwaukee’s strong attendance – the retractable roof at Miller Park has done wonders for making April baseball tolerable here over the past 20 years . April weather tends to mostly suck in the Upper Midwest, and while you’ll regularly see four figure crowds at the Cincis and Pittsburghs of the league this early in they year when the weather is lousy, you have more or less a floor of 20K fans showing up per game at Miller Park, and this has held mostly true over the past decade (maybe down to 16K or 17K in some of the shittier Brewers seasons).
Of course, having exciting games early in the year (2 series vs STL, and one each vs CHC and LAD) and coming off an NLCS appearance helps, but knowing the bottom will never really drop out (also: no chance of home postponements) due to crummy weather is a huge benefit to the Brewers, and something that other similar climate teams should strongly consider whenever it comes time to pony up for a new ballpark.
The players are mostly wearing long sleeves tonight, so the roof doesn’t seem to be doing much in the way of climate control.
However, I agree with you that probably 20 teams could benefit from having retractable roofs, whether to protect against shitty cold, rainy April/May weather in the Northeast/Midwest or ungodly hot weather in the South.
Is there any way to do an analysis looking rises and drops in attendance compared to ticket prices and increases? I know that, typically, all the most expensive tickets (e.g., Cardinals “green seats”) are bought out by corporations, so that makes any average ticket price comparison difficult, and I don’t know that median ticket prices are ever released.
That would be extremely tough to do with all the teams that use dynamic pricing these days.
I tried doing this when this article went up, and again to respond to tung twista below. Frankly, it’s pretty difficult. I think you’d have to do it with the cost of, say, a 20-game season ticket package (or something like it) in 2018 vs 2012 vs 2006 for a particular section.
Because I’m interested in the “what happens when kids don’t go to baseball games and grow up” question, I was trying to do it for “Home Plate View” seats at Target Field, which are pretty far back but otherwise behind home plate. They’re some of the less expensive seats, but not the absolute cheapest–so about what we’d want for a family of four (or five, or six…). So if you can track the price of seats that are kind of like that, for each stadium, you’d have it.
Like I said though, it’s tough to get your hands on.
I have a feeling that Minnesota’s attendance will become healthy once the weather gets better and fans appreciate the Twins’ homers flying out of the park multiple times per game and that the team could take the division from the beat up Tribe . . .
I agree. The weather has been awful and the team looks good. Attendance will get better.
Agree that attendance will get better with the weather. There are many people ready and willing to go catch a ballgame assuming 1) the weather is decent, and 2) the team is competitive. After a long winter, the number of people who think 46 and cloudy is decent weather for sitting still for 3 hours is remarkably low.
One other minor Minnesota note this year. Minnesota United FC opened a new stadium this year and each of the three games has been sold out (I believe) with just under 20,000 in attendance. I know three games of impact isn’t much and soccer and baseball crowds are not a 100% crossover, but the sports attending folk who do want to go to an event may factor the new shiny toy in their decision making. 46 and cloudy for an hour and 45 minutes with a new shiny toy? That’s decent enough weather.
In any case, if the Twins are competitive in the summer, fans will come out. It may take awhile though. Many years of a lesser on-field product has lost some potential ticket buyers, I’m sure.
The Blue Jays opened 2018 with 4 games at home against the Yankees. They opened this year with 4 games at home against the Tigers. They had 45,000 more fans at the opening series last year. They also drew good to great crowds against the Yankees the rest of the year. They have not played the Yankees or any other marquee teams at home this year. For a fairly small sample of ~15 games, something as simple as this could matter if you are looking at the individual teams.
Now, this says nothing about the larger trend.
To the people claiming ‘it’s the price stupid’ and bash prices for the Cubs, Red Sox, Yankees, Dodgers, etc. those teams happened to be the ones who are doing the best attendance wise.
From a profit maximizing perspective, you could actually argue that these teams should raise their ticket prices.
It is the teams whose tickets are among the cheapest (Rays, Pirates, Reds, Athletics, etc.) that have bad attendance numbers.
Obviously, there is a dynamic going on here (attendance is not good so the small market teams have promos and drop the prices) but ‘Yankees tickets are so expensive. That is why MLB attendance suffers’ is not a valid argument.
This, my Pirates season tickets average out to $11 a seat per game and that is row C on the LF line. Admittedly, beer prices are over $10, but it is easily possible to go to a game as a small family for $100. I think other mitigating factors need to be considered. The Pirates draw terribly because the city as a whole hates ownership. Sports fans rarely hear any positive takes on the team outside of its flagship radio station. I’m sure different situations apply to the Florida teams and others. I never have understood why the Cleveland fans stopped going.
I think they draw poorly in Florida, because the people with most of the money don’t live there during the summer. The Rays should probably just relocate, and if the Marlins hadn’t managed to swindle a new stadium from the city of Miami, the same would be even more true of them.
Oakland’s home attendance has been anemic this year — their average of ~20K is boosted by their 2 “home” games in Tokyo which saw >45K attendance each. Without those, their true home average attendance has been ~16K which is pretty dismal.
Thankfully most of that is just scheduling as they had only 3 weekend games in April, against the Blue Jays.
Interesting that the Nats are showing a slight increase in attendance despite having a mediocre (bad vs. expectations) 2018 and losing Harper in free agency. They made a lot of moves in the offseason, but other than Patrick Corbin none of them were really marquee type deals.
I think the weather was really awful last year in April in Washington. I know I went to one Sunday afternoon game last April that was a miserable, drizzly, cold and windy day. I had seats in the upper deck, and never sat in them, and there was almost no one in the upper deck. There seemed to be a lot of nice weather this April.
Man the Rays are down even though they won last year and are doing very well this year. I feel for them.
The Rays will never draw. Baseball in Tampa is a disaster.
MLBAM deal wih disney will be the slow death of baseball. How Manfred still has a job is beyond me.
Its 2019, its all about social media and growing the brand. grow the players, and the brand grow too.
But the MLBAM deal practically makes social media impossible for MLB and hamstrings them to where they can’t compete with the NFL or the NBA. SAD
with half the teams front offices intentionally losing …….that definitely does not help MLB and hurts attendance drastically.
The Expos move to DC didn’t help the Orioles one bit. It’s no wonder Angelos has fought hard in the MASN lawsuit.
Here’s something I’ve not seen anyone mention: The higher attendance teams are not too adversely affected, in terms of tickets sold, by bad weather. Most tickets for teams like the Cubs and Red Sox are already sold, so there’s not much of a hit in walk-up ticket sales. Lousy weather in Chicago may mean Cubs attendance is about 32-36 thousand. Same weather for the White Sox has a huge impact. The Sox season ticket base is much smaller, so, with few walk-ups, attendance is in the teens.
Baseball is too long to draw people’s attention all year. I live in St. Louis, one of the attendance winners up there. Many big time Cardinal fans I know are already losing interest, but I know they will be interested again come late August for playoff pushes.
Compared to NFL, where every game is an event you only CAN see 8 times a year, paying attention to 162 games asks a lot of people. And asking them to come to 81 is another issue at the prices + the experience for the cost.
Pretty sure the lousy and eccentric weather plays a part in the low attendances too.
I live in an area with an MLB team, one of the smaller areas. On virtually every day/night during baseball season there are 2-4 MLB games being broadcast – the local team, a team “down the street” a bit, and the games on MLB/ESPN, etc., that usually include one or more big market teams, and that doesn’t include what might be streaming . As long as MLB wants to maximize their television/streaming revenues, they will suffer at the turnstile.
Thank you Bryce Harper.
In the case of Kansas City, we’ve never been real big about supporting bad teams. Royals will need to get more progress on the rebuild and start looking like contenders, then the attendance will rebound fairly quickly.
Maybe when teams stop r***ng the fans with obscene ticket prices and $12 beers and $6 for a 50 cent hot dog, they will be more inclined to come out. Baseball used to be accessible, that’s what made it America’s past time. A kid could scrounge up a few bucks and spend a whole day at the ballpark. Now you need the extreme mega ultra sports package with 87 sports channels that you’ll never watch just to see half your team’s games on TV. That’s why baseball is dying now. It’s not pace of play or 3 true outcomes, it’s the way that teams abuse the fans that would actually like to come out to the game but can’t stand being nickeled and dimed for everything they’re worth.