MLB: How baseball has changed over the decade

The very much bigger bucks

In 2009, the average Major League baseball team had $193.9 million in annual revenues. Almost all of that came from two sources, attendance and media, almost all of the latter being TV/radio.
In 2019, MLB teams averaged a daily gate of a few hundred above 28,000. That’s about 2,000 fewer fans (6.7 percent) than the average attendance from 2009. So how much have team revenues declined as a result?

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The obvious answer is: They haven’t … not even close. In fact, MLB teams have shrugged off the decreased gate interest because they have in the interim opened up substantial new revenue streams.

Several teams today are renting out their ballparks for far more non-baseball events – concerts and the like – than ever before. Beyond that, many have found ways to monetize their environs by buying up those environs and converting them into game-related sites: apartments, restaurants, offices and public parks. Online revenue sources, streaming and team-specific revenue sources also exist.

In a handful of cases – the rooftop bleachers outside Wrigley Field being the obvious example – teams have worked out leasing or purchase agreements to get a piece of that action as well….and in some cases all of that action.

Through those means and others, teams have not only weathered the decade but flourished through it. In 2009, the average revenue of the 30 MLB teams was just under $194 million. Today, that revenue figure has almost exactly doubled, to an average of $387.5 million.

Those increases are not, of course, uniform. The Dodgers are basking in a $308 million revenue increase since 2009, about $250 million more than the Oakland Athletics.

Nevertheless, revenues for two-thirds of teams have grown in excess of $100 million across the decade. Not a single team is scraping by today on less than 36 percent more revenue than it took in a decade ago.

Granted, inflation eats up a part of that…although in most cases it’s a small part. The inflation rate since 2009 is 20 percent. According to statistics provided by Forbes and by Statista.com, that’s a little more than half the income growth of the game’s poorest team, the Athletics.

The players have shared in this increased wealth, although not necessarily proportionately.
In 2009, the average MLB Opening Day payroll was about $89.2 million. In 2019, the comparable figure was $133.8 million, a 50 percent increase.