April Attendance Unfazed by Economy
Late this winter, as it became clear that the economy was heading toward recession or at least a stall, millions of people with no interest in the abstract workings of money and profit began to wonder how wide financial pains would affect their small corners of the country. Early returns are coming in, and for some, such as construction workers, retailers, and bakers, things look bad. Baseball operators, though, can be optimistic, if only tentatively so. The sky may yet fall, but if it does, the heavier part will likely land elsewhere.
If this is a broad conclusion to draw one month into the season, it's hardly an unwarranted one. As I wrote several months ago, there's little reason to think that hard times will affect baseball's popularity much, if at all. While everyone likes to gripe about how expensive tickets are, ball games remain affordable relative to other ways of spending a night out; the sport also has many ways of making money, and its fans tend to be relatively well-off. There's also little correlation, historically, between a bad economy and downturns in attendance, which serves as a reasonable proxy for the game's overall financial health. All this being so, in the absence of information suggesting that baseball is hurting, it's likely safe to assume it isn't, and won't be.
At least so far, there is just such an absence. In those baseball towns that are hurting most badly, at least as measured by home foreclosure rates, there's no sign at all that people have stopped going to games. If anything, the opposite is true. Areas of Michigan, Northern California, and Ohio have all been ravaged by the bursting of the housing bubble. Entire neighborhoods have been shuttered up, with knock-on effects that have torn through local economies, and if anyone would be expected to be counting their pennies and staying away from the ballparks, it would be them. These canaries might yet pitch over dead, but for now, they're still chirping.
According to RealtyTrac, a private firm that tracks foreclosures, we can identify six distinct areas with major league teams that should, in theory, be doing badly. Detroit is arguably in the worst shape; the firm identified the city proper as having the highest foreclosure rate in the nation last year, and the Tigers draw not only from home but from the Warren/Farmington Hills/Troy area of Michigan and from Toledo, Ohio — both ranked among the top 20. Last year, coming off an American League pennant, the Tigers drew 32,101 per home game through April 29; this year, that figure is up 13.7%, to 36,488.
Northern California may have been hit worse. Stockton, Sacramento, Fresno, and Bakersfield, in addition to Oakland proper, all ranked among the top 14 metro areas with the highest foreclosure rates last year. And at a glance, the early attendance returns for Oakland and San Francisco look bad: The A's are down 17.3%, and the Giants 14.5%. This probably doesn't have much to do with the economy, though. Last April, the Yankees, baseball's best road draw, pulled in two huge gates in Oakland; halve those totals, and Oakland is down just 4% this year. The Giants, meanwhile, enjoyed the benefit of Barry Bonds's chase for Henry Aaron's career home runs record last year.
Cleveland ranked sixth according to RealtyTrac, and the Indians' market takes in Akron, which ranked 12th, and Toledo, which they split with the Tigers. Last year the Tribe drew 17,522 fans per game through April 29, albeit in only six games, given that freak weather forced them to play a series in Milwaukee. This year, coming off last year's dramatic playoff run, they're up 13.28%, to 23,269. Denver, home of the Colorado Rockies, ranked ninth, and that team's even more dramatic playoff run, and eventual pennant, has resulted in even more dramatic returns at the box office: Their home attendance is up 38%, to 32,858 a game.
Atlanta, ranked 11th, has seen little change. Last April, they averaged 30,597, this month, they're at 29,477, down 5.8%. Their National League East rivals, the Florida Marlins, who draw from hard-hit Miami and Fort Lauderdale, are the one team that's seen a really dramatic downturn this year, at 17.5%. The difference amounts to about 3,000 tickets per game, but the upshot is that they were drawing flies last year, and are doing so again this year. One would be hard-pressed to draw a line between this and the bad effects of real estate speculation.
All of this is of course provisional; attendance does not provide a full picture of the game's economy any more than foreclosure rates provide full pictures of regional ones. Still, if through the first month there has been no discernible link between one and the other, while there clearly is one between on-field success and fan approval, it's safe to say that the sport is, so far, doing fine. Ticket prices are obscene, but that's just proof that people are willing to pay them. It will take something much stronger than a sluggish economy to keep people from throwing money at the national pastime — fine evidence that our countrymen have their priorities entirely right.
tmarchman@nysun.com
