On the surface, MLB’s final regular-season attendance looked a lot like other recent years. But a deeper look reveals baseball ticket sales patterns entering a period of significant transition.
The league finished the 2016 season with an attendance of 73.16 million, down 0.8 percent and the third decline at the gate in the last four seasons. The 2016 season was also MLB’s eighth in a row in which it stayed within a tight range of between 73 million and 75 million.
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The Toronto Blue Jays posted the league’s largest attendance increase.
Photo by: GETTY IMAGES
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But many ticketing executives who do large amounts of MLB ticket business said they found a widening gap between high-demand games and lower ones, and increasing amounts of no-shows. Houston-based Eventellect, which has formal relationships with several MLB teams, said it saw the largest amount of baseball ticket spoilage this season in its nine-year history.
“There’s been a growing trend in which the high-demand games are fetching really high, robust prices. But for the lower-demand ones, it’s almost as if nothing outside of a bobblehead giveaway really gets people to go,” said Patrick Ryan, Eventellect co-founder.
Industry analysts pointed to a broader trend in which attendance for the NFL and some other pro leagues and college sports has also ebbed downward in recent seasons.
“I am most worried about the falling live attendance for sports,” said Laura Martin, entertainment and internet analyst with Needham & Co. “It’s exactly the opposite of what we’re seeing in music, where we’re getting price increases of 10 and 20 percent a year.”
The 2016 season also saw the emergence of more communal ballpark spaces around the league, after the successful introduction in recent seasons of The Corner at Cleveland’s Progressive Field and The Rooftop at Denver’s Coors Field. Even the Cincinnati Reds, which had MLB’s largest attendance decline in 2016, successfully introduced a new rooftop patio and walk-in bar at Great American Ball Park.
“More and more, buyers in a lot of markets are forgoing the $50 ticket near the dugout for the $75 ticket upstairs that includes food and beverage and a cool communal space,” Ryan said.
Among individual teams (see chart), Toronto represented one of the league’s biggest attendance stories. The Blue Jays drew 3.39 million to Rogers Centre this season, their largest draw since 1990; posted the league’s largest attendance increase; and ended a 13-year run by the New York Yankees as the most attended team in the American League.
“Toronto is one of our real bright spots right now,” MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said. “Amazing attendance up there this year, great television performance, all of the measures of fan avidity really across Canada for the Blue Jays are unbelievable. I think that shows the fundamentals of baseball in Canada are really good.”
MLB attendance remains a vital indicator on the health of the league, and the sports industry at large. Baseball has by far more ticket inventory to sell than any other league, and ticket sales traditionally have represented the sport’s largest individual revenue source.
