Baseball contenders not selling tickets

Yesterday saw a highly publicized flap, Tampa Bay Rays stars David Price and Evan Longoria criticized fans of the team for not showing up to big games. The blowback was intense. Although the team is in first place and near clinching a division title, the Rays turnstiles have seen barely more than a trickle.

Tampa-St. Pete is a terrible baseball market. Transplants to Florida have loyalties to their original teams. The stadium is awful. But the real multiplier effect has been the great economic malaise, which has hit the area with a gut punch. While we hope the Rays move to Durham soon, we recognize that this season, the Rays are not alone.

The New York Times notes several contenders are playing to 4/5ths empty parks; besides the Rays, the Atlanta Braves and Cincinnati Reds have been playing in front of far less than packed houses down the stretch. Overall baseball attendance is down for a third straight season. As America stumbles into what may be a lost decade, attendance may never again reach its previous heights.

Among the clubs with the most notable attendance declines the New York Mets, who cannot draw despite billions of dollars poured into a new stadium. Also seeing major sales decreases Chicago and Los Angeles, where the Cubs and the Dodgers have had disappointing seasons. Part of the more permanent structural adjustment can be seen in cities like Baltimore, Cleveland and Toronto, where attendance has been slipping for several years. Once home to new marquis parks, those stadiums are now more than ten years old and baseball's revenue model assures these lower income teams endless second-tier status. Rather than try to revive their moribund clubs, these franchises (and the Rays) may opt to follow the model pioneered by Kansas City and Pittsburgh. The model, as Deadspin revealed last month, is permanently putrid franchises whose owners see more profit in losing than attempting to win through increased payroll expenditure on player salary.

The Clarion Content has been arguing that sports' comeuppance will be one of the biggest effects of the collapse of the American economy. The tremors are starting. The richest owners and teams will not want to continue subdividing their profits with those who do not even make a serious effort to compete. We would predict that baseball contraction will see four to six less Major League franchises by the end of this decade.