Even though the article talks about baseball, it's relevant to college football too. Interesting read particularly the part that deals with the demographics of fans in attendance.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/29/sports/baseball/mlb-at...

One thing worth nothing re: baseball is that the attendance is now back to what it was in 2003. So while a decline from recent years isn't good, it's not as though its lower than ever.

To me, the biggest issue is the cost for a family to attend. I went to the Reds final game, and Marty Brennamen's last game ever, last week. While I'm sure it could be done for far less, my costs looked roughly like this - just for me.

$20 - Ticket in the 400 level - closer to the LF foul pole than 3B.
$7 - Ticket fees
$5 - Cost for a real physical ticket

$15 (or $20 in some places) - Parking (I'm sure if I looked harder, I could have found it for less)
$14 - 16oz draft - a Cincy IPA
$7 - Stadium Brat
$10 - Second beer - 16oz Hudy Delight

$78 total for being at the game and eating in the park

Add in a $30 t-shirt, and a couple other trinkets at the team store.


Comparatively speaking, Peden stadium for a beer costs about half, and a dog/brat costs what, $4? For me, value for my money is something that keeps me coming back to Athens for football and hoops.

The cost of the game ticket for baseball, at least in Cincinnati and Cleveland, isn't unreasonable to me. The costs for concessions and parking is absurd.

On the other hand, the cost of a football game ticket, for P5 games, is well over the top in my opinion. Does someone know what the going rate for a game at ND, Michigan, MSU, Penn State, etc is? I think most OSU games the ticket cost is bordering on, or exceeding $100.

Was considering some tickets to this weekend's Tennessee/Georgia game. Cheapest we could find (nosebleed section) were $68 a pop. Multiply that by the number of tickets you want and I will quickly find alternative entertainment.

Plus the Vols are horrible this year and that's from a guy who grew up rooting for Tennessee and Penn State.

Attendance woes could be related to many things. In my opinion, there are 2 big ones. People (not just young) just do not do as much stuff outside of the home, from shopping to work to sporting events...All have shifted to more in-home. Second, the average mentality of a sports fan has changed. People used to just lose themselves in that day's game and enjoy the battle for that day...now everything is about the grand prize, and if the team is out of the running for said grand prize, less and less people feel it deserves their attention. Competitive teams still draw as they did before for the most part, it is the bad teams that are driving the decline.

Key quote from this article:

But the main reason attendance is down, in Major League Baseball as well as most of the other major professional sports, and the main reason owners and commissioners aren’t sweating it too much, I’d argue, is because it can be. Teams don’t really care anymore about bringing fans to the stadium — at least not as much as they used to —because they no longer need people in the seats to make money.

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/07/nobodys-going-to-s...

The first large graph in the article entitled "average ticket sales per game" across MLB clearly shows the effect of recessions following bursting of the dot-com (2001) and housing (2009) bubbles. Attendance quickly rebounded the first time; the second, not so much. I suspect this reflects a fundamental trend toward simple caution with money, as opposed to a "millennial" and/or "digital" explanation. With respect to individual teams, good vs. bad, the smaller graph of the Yankees' attendance shows a monotonic slide (from 50K+ to 40K per game) since the opening of their new stadium in 2009 (with $1.2B in public subsidies), despite 4 division titles and 8 play-off appearances. And Tampa Bay has the second-worst attendance in MLB this year (14.7K per game) despite qualifying for the playoffs. Meanwile, the typically sub-0.500 Royals (0.364 right now) have managed to average a steady 20K (18.5 K this year), with a huge World Series bump in 2015, despite serving a much smaller market (2M vs. 20M). The Royals' payroll and average ticket price are half those of the Yankees. The Royals also play in a half-century-old stadium built for $70M (ca. $400M today, one-fifth the cost of the new Yankee Stadium). All of the above assumes that reported attendance statistics bear some correspondence to reality, which may or may not be true.

Throw Tampa out of the equation, that stadium is so bad for baseball they should pay people to attend. I can’t even watch a game on tv from that stadium.

With Marlins averaging 10,016 and Rays averaging 14,734 while Kansas City is averaging 18,495 I have to wonder if MLB with its smaller 34,000 seat stadium trend could work in a traditional AAA market like Norfolk, Buffalo or Oklahoma City. There is talk of more MLB expansion because the owners can bathe in the expansion fee then geographic realignment. A couple moves for rivalries might work. Bring back Montreal but them into the AL with Toronto. Montreal needs to be in there with Toronto and NYY to make it work but it could again in a new downtown stadium.

The two biggest attendance failures also happen to be in regions where there are so many other options for entertainment, and the population in non-native to the region.

Buffalo Bisons games are fun...in the late spring and summer...but the MLB regular season runs from late March to the end of September. For much of that time period...you’re not really looking at pleasant baseball watching weather. ESPECIALLY for night games. That said, a MLB team there might draw pretty well from ~Memorial Day to ~Labor Day. That said, you’ve already got 5ish MLB teams active in that region (Indians, Pirates, Mets, Yankees, Blue Jays)

The price may depend on not just where the seat is but when you buy them. Some schools have gone to demand-based pricing, so the price goes up as fewer seats are left. The closer to game day the more it's likely to cost.

As for MLB, I gave up on them during the '94 strike. Haven't been to a MLB game since then and haven't even watched more than an inning on TV.

Why? Do you boycott all other sports over labor strife?