Market Dynamics
2006-02-10 19:59
Marine Layer has a fabulous essay over on his A’s ballpark blog about the relationship between the amount of personal income in a metropolitan area, and the number of sports teams in that market. Money quote:
Many outsiders and the Bay Area’s own media blame the market’s fickle, fair-weather fans for attendance woes. In the end, does this have more to do with simple market dynamics?
1. This reminds me of something I once heard about the Hartford Whalers (now Carolina Hurricanes) of the NHL. The Whalers were always mocked for having poor attendance but they had the highest percentage of season ticket holders per capita in a 50-mile radius of any team in the league. It's just that that circle had a small population and beyond was Bruin and Ranger territory. The fans that could reasonably identify with Hartford were the most passionate in the league.
That's a great study and it's clear that New York could stand a third (and fourth) baseball team. Both Manhattan and Brooklyn could support a team better in addition to the Mets (Queens/LI) and Yanks (Bronx, tri-state). If baseball didn't have an anti-trust exemption it's clear that teams would relocate in NYC.
2. That's true about the Whalers (I was part of that small coterie of fans). The big problem was that the small attendance numbers caused them to raise ticket prices to ridiculous levels to make any money. My friend and I stopped going to games because the ticket prices just got to be too much for us to afford.