Is America’s Pastime a Thing of the Past?

Low attendance  changes Major League Baseball

My first professional baseball game was at Angels Stadium when I was five years-old. 

I don’t remember the outcome of the game, but I remember the feelings of the stadium I eventually fell in love with. The smells of the fresh-cut outfield grass mixed with the churros stationed for sale every 100 feet. 

The beautifully sung National Anthem was followed by the sound of fireworks exploding over the stadium. I could hear the pop of the catcher’s mitt every time he caught a near 100 mile-per-hour fastball, even from the upper-deck. The cheers, the boos, the anticipation of every pitch—I was enamored with everything about the game. 

As I grew older and continued to learn the strategic mannerisms of baseball, my fondness for the sport grew. 

My grandpa compared each baseball game to a match of chess. The two managers, sitting in their respective dugouts on opposite sides of home plate were indulged in a mental battle with one another. 

There is such a slim margin of error in baseball—one miscue, or wrong move—could make or break a team’s season. I was hooked. 

Ever since my first baseball game, I have been a die-hard Angels fan. From growing up and going to Angel games with my family to selling hot-dogs in the right field pavilion—I have done it all.

While my fanaticism for baseball has grown, others cannot say the same. Major League Baseball (MLB) has seen a gradual decline in its attendance within the last decade. The total MLB attendance was 68,494,752, down 1.62 percent from 2019–following a 4 percent drop from 2018. Last season was the first time in 15 years that baseball’s total attendance had dropped under the 70 million total threshold.

In 2018, the league and MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred attributed the downtick in attendance to the country’s unusual wet and cold weather in the spring. But in 2019, they had no excuse. Attendance continued to fall—and fall hard at that. The last two years are not anomalies—since 2015, the last year that MLB saw a slim uptick, attendance has dropped 7.14 percent. This equates to a loss of more than five million fans. 

Even with baseball’s home run totals reaching a historic high in 2019, fans were not willing to spend money to see their teams play in-person. Baseball officials understand the complications that come with attracting people to the stadium. 

Games are long—an average of over three hours per nine innings. Fan bases are aging, and many major league teams are “tanking,” or strategically losing in order to get a better draft pick and build back up their minor league systems. In 2019, four teams lost more than 100 games, and fans do not want to go to a game when their team is not putting out quality players.

Ironically, the league’s total revenue, which reached a high of $10 billion in 2018, has increased by more than 70 percent over the last 10 years. A large majority of teams’ revenue is coming from media and legal fee rights—not ticket sales.

“It’s never going to go away,” said Noah Garden, MLB executive vice president for business and sales of ticket sales. “But it’s going to change. There are going to be a different number of people that want to purchase tickets a different way.”

In order to negate their attendance woes, MLB recognized that they had to implement new ticket options to attract fans to the ballpark. Currently, 18 of the 30 MLB teams offer a special type of subscription option for fans to purchase. 

The offer ranges from $30 per month for standing room only to $125 for a guaranteed seat. In each “subscribed” month, a fan can go to any home game that a team’s schedule entails. 

While MLB teams may not be making a lot of money off of this ticket offer, it is meant to attract younger fans—who are used to paying monthly subscription fees for platforms such as Netflix, Hulu and Spotify. 

“You’re not going to get rich off the ballpark pass,” said Brooks Boyer, the White Sox’s senior vice president for sales and marketing. “But you’re getting people in the park.” 

Although the subscription pass is a step in the right direction, baseball officials have to walk a fine line. If a team’s ticket prices drop too much, they run the risk of devaluing their product, the team and chasing away passionate season ticket owners that spend thousands of dollars each year for a premier fan experience. In the Bay Area, the Oakland Athletics and San Francisco Giants have both experienced success with their subscription ballpark passes. 

The Athletics averaged over 1,000 more fans at games this season, with just less than 10,000 purchasing their subscription pass in 2019. In San Francisco, the Giants sold out their 2,500 ballpark passes on the first day they were available this season.

“In today’s world, it’s more about connecting with that brand,” said Mario Alioto, Giant’s vice president for business operations. 

That brand also includes businesses that may want to experience a baseball game as more of a work gathering. To supplement this, teams have begun replacing luxury suites with bigger, more spacious premium lounges. The decision for MLB teams to rip out luxury suites is a risk, as they account for nearly one-fourth of one’s attendance revenue. Nonetheless, teams realized that something had to change. 

Baseball is not dying. The MLB is making money through media rights when fans watch games, but they also must realize that in order to create lifelong fans, they need more people attending games. This is an industry-wide problem that teams must address. When I was younger, I would count down the days until my family’s next Angel game. I wore my glove to every game in hopes of catching a foul ball and brought a pen to ask for my favorite player’s autographs. 

Watching baseball in-person is a special experience that one can’t replicate while watching from a living room. 

Teams must not only tell us this, but show us. No two games that I’ve attended have ever been the same. The sounds, sights and outcome differ every night in baseball. That is what makes the game and a fan’s experience so perfectly imperfect.

Contact Nic Carpino at ncarpino@scu.edu or call (408) 554-4852.