Posted by John Vrooman on Wednesday, July 18, 2018 in Major League Baseball.

Interview with Tampa Tribune.

Fan-Age PDF

Do you have any perspective on what could be behind the more than 5 percent decline in MLB attendance?

The entertainment dollar in the sports industry across the board is becoming very competitive very rapidly. All major sports are experiencing a secular and regional aging in fan demographics. This is particularly true for MLB attendance in the retirement destination states of Florida and Arizona.

Here are the changes in TV fan-base age over the last decade.

The Sunshine State has always been a hard-sell popularity paradox given the growth of the retirement age snow-bird non-fan demographic compared to the sheer abundance of native home grown baseball talent and year-round player development. MLB fans are getting older relatively fast and this is particularly true for the markets of Tampa Bay and Miami.

I know not every team has slumped. Any reason why some teams have bucked the trend?

There is also clear evidence that sports like MLB with longer seasons (162 games) have a greater attendance elasticity with respect to winning, especially perennial winning.

Any thoughts on what is driving the trend toward smaller ballparks?

Smaller venues simply maximize the bottom line for a  territorial monopoly. It is a classic monopoly pricing scheme to charge half as many fans more than twice as much. That simple profit maximizing scheme has been driving the luxury stadium revolution since Oriole Park at Camden Yards in 1992.

Unfortunately the profit max scheme by its internal nature excludes many eager fans and drives the economic outcome far away from the competitive social optimum of baseball, where the ballpark is designed to satisfy as many baseball fans as possible at the lowest possible price.

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