League Notes

Many Ballparks Having Trouble Selling Premium Seats

In Philadelphia, John Smallwood writes of the NBA appointing Army Maj. Gen. Ronald Johnson to the newly created position of Senior VP/Referee Operations, "I'll give NBA commissioner David Stern this much: When the issue is credibility, he certainly knows how to at least give the appearance that he is tackling it head on." The "assumption ... is that the governing of NBA officials will be separated from the functions of basketball operations. That is a huge step toward convincing the public that the league will have little if any influence over the officiating wing of its product" (PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS, 7/3).

POWER OUTAGE: The AP's Tim Dahlberg wrote look around almost any MLB ballpark "outside of Boston or [N.Y.] and you'll see large chunks of prime seats going unused -- whether the game is sold out or not." The economy "could be to blame, as could the price of gas," as could "ticket prices that increased 10.9[%] this season alone." Or, "maybe baseball isn't delivering on what brought fans back to the ballpark in the first place in the late '90s and touched off today's attendance boom: the big home run" (AP, 7/2).

TRENDING UPWARD: WNBA games on ABC through the end of June (four games) are averaging a 0.6 rating (747,035 viewers), up from a 0.5 rating last season. On ESPN2, WNBA games are averaging a 0.2 coverage area rating (250,241 viewers) through six games, even from the same point last season. Also, WNBA average attendance has risen to 7,519 through the end of June, a 2.44% increase over an average of 7,340 through the comparable period in '07 (THE DAILY).