MLB Attendance Is Down, but Revenues Continue to Rise
By Bill Felber
On the whole, however, MLB attendance isn’t an issue for teams because they simply don’t function on gate receipts. Among the 10 studied teams, the average gate revenue was $137 million. The Angels took in about $90 million at the gate…basically enough to pay Albert Pujols, Mike Trout, Justin Upton, Andrelton Simmons, and Zach Cozart. The other $68 million of their on-field payroll, not to mention all other operational expenses — comes from outside Angels Stadium.
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Local revenue methods play a big part. On Chicago’s North Side, the Ricketts family has basically purchased the entire Wrigley Field neighborhood, and bit by bit is monetizing it via the construction of hotels, an office building, entertainment sites and the like. With the development of their Ballpark Village, the Cardinals are doing much the same.
It is a fair question whether these kinds of big-market practices can be replicated in the game’s smaller environments. Certainly the most remunerative and significant – market size – cannot be, at least not to the same extent. But many of the off-field revenue-generating practices can and will be replicated, if on a scaled-down version.
St. Louis is not, by the standards of MLB demographics, a large market, yet the Cardinals are expanding the revenue-generating capabilities of their ballpark environment virtually by the moment. Indeed, they’re being encouraged to do so by the city of St. Louis, which sees it as an effective urban improvement mechanism.
If off-park revenue generation can be done in St. Louis, it can – and eventually will – be done in other smaller markets.
Next. Jeter doing exactly what he needs to with Marlins. dark
That does not mean you as a paying-at-the-gate customer will someday be rendered obsolete. Or does it? As long as you keep buying those satellite TV deals, the t-shirts, and those camp experiences, it probably won’t matter.