February 19, 2008
Helping Attendance
The Mets are 10% ahead of ticket sales compared to last year. Last summer, writing at Baseball Prospectus, I noticed how attendance started taking off with the advent of free agency (subscription required):
Apart from short boosts, however, baseball remained relatively static. The fan base didn't seem to change, and even moving franchises around the country and adding expansion teams didn't help. Dividing leagues into divisions didn't help. There was one change baseball needed that had nothing to do with the game on the field or communications technology--baseball needed constant dynamism.
That happened in the mid 1970s with the advent of free agency. Look at how the trend line keeps going up from 1976. The dividing line couldn't be clearer--from Messersmith and McNally onward, fan interest grew. Fans like the dynamic rosters that resulted from free agency. The money involved fascinated us; where $100,000 was a huge salary beforehand, suddenly players were making $1 million a year. Teams could seemingly go from also-rans to contenders overnight. Worst-to-first became a reality. The game now held the interest of the faithful 365 days a year.
Here's just another example. Paying lots of money for a player gets the fans interested.
Posted by David Pinto at
03:45 PM
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The Reds are the only team whose best season attendance wise was in the 70's (1976) So... on this day that Bob Howsam dies, the Reds can thank him for that...and with your note on free agency they can thank him for the fact that it still remains their best season attendance wise. Because his reaction to free agency hung over that franchise for the longest time.
Apropos of nothing and I'm not sure if it was covered here already, but this is sort of...interesting:
http://www.sportsline.com/mlb/story/10647918/1
Apparently some U-Penn guys came up with a statistical model that rates defense, and presented their findings to the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Really? This stuff is new?