While We’re Waiting… Cavs and Kings, Browns Draft Busts and Tribe Pick Rolling
April 15, 2011The Truth About Trades
April 15, 2011
While Cleveland is setting all sorts of attendance records during the first month of the 2011 season, Gabe Lacques of the USA Today reports that the Indians are far from the only franchise feeling the wrath of empy seats.
As our own Jon laid out in a post that provided excellent WFNY community feedback, the depths of these attendance issues reach well beyond the “sticking it to Dolan” crowd. Echoing much of this, Lacques references weather, the school year and a complete lack of storyline right out of the gate. In fact, while Cleveland may be in the bowels of the nation’s economic issues, the other cities experiencing low paid park totals may surprise you.
In the history of their respective stadiums, five other storied franchises are falling on hard times: Atlanta Braves, Minnesota Twins, Seattle Mariners, St. Louis Cardinals and the New York Yankees.
Sure, the Twins and Yankees have a relatively small sample size, but both franchises have experienced a ton of recent success in the record books. St. Louis may as well be Baseball Town USA and there is no doubting the capacity for big-name draw having arguably the best player in the game calling the ‘Lou home.
The USA Today post also references other franchises that are “nearing rock bottom,” including the Chicago Cubs – where fans historically take days off at a time to attend games – and the New York Mets, yet another large market, high payroll team. Naturally, this shows that, while Cleveland fans may scream a different narrative, spending money does not necessarily translate to higher attendance figures. What this does not show, just yet, is the increase in attendance as the weather improves, school lets out and the undesireables fall to the bottom of their respective divisions.
Presently, the Indians are coming back to Cleveland for a three-game stint with the Baltimore Orioles. The Tribe is just coming off of a 4-2 road trip and sit atop the AL Central, tied with the Kansas City Royals at 8-4. The Orioles also experienced a hot start and sit just one game behind the Yankees in the AL East. It’s a Friday night, so there is no school tomorrow; game-time temperature is slated to be just under 60 degrees.
Can the Indians rebound from the opening weekend numbers? Only time will tell.
18 Comments
I for one am doing my part headed to the game tonight supposed to be the last nice day this week hopefully we get a win and start another streak Go Tribe
It’s cool that the Tribe dropped some of their ticket prices to try and get people back to the stadium…but how many people just say “for the price of one beer at the game I can have six on my couch while watching it”? I’m from the DC Metro area so I get one trip to Cleveland a year but I can tell you I don’t go to as many Nats and O’s games as I’d like and it’s more because of beer/food prices than it is because of ticket prices or even how the teams are doing.
@1 – with Dollar Dog Night tonight and the new Dad’s Beer Stand selling beers for $4.50 – it is cheaper to go to a game than drink downtown.
@2 – good points and add in that for some games you can get a $15 with $10 in concessions included (if they are still doing that this year)
They are doing the three-inning lunch deal. They’re also doing the two-for-Tuesday where you get two lower bowl seats and $20 in food perks for $42 – rendering some of the best seats in the house an $11-a-pop price tag. Can’t beat that.
Reason baseball is falling behind:
Having moved away from Cleveland three years ago into a non-market area (SC), we dont have a local team. If you are not paying for the extra packages, we are left to the wrath of the major networks TV and radio to bring us the games.
ESPN game of the last weekend: New York v Boston
ESPN game of the week this weekend: New York v Tampa Bay
Growing up in Cleveland I have a team. But all these kids coming up today if they live in a non-market area they are force fed Yankees, Red Sox, Dodgers, Cubs and who ever they happen to be playing (when they are not playing eachother – I feel like, thanks to a divison heavy schedule I have to hear about every New York Boston series like its the greatest game to be ever played)
The major networks aren’t promoting the game they are promoting their major markets – Unlike football were every week you are watching 4 – 5 games showing 8 – 10 different teams.
People don’t go to baseball games because no one is getting exposed to how great these other teams can be or get excited about a team other than the ones we are told we need to be excited about.
I blame the Dolans for the attendance woes in every city.
I know the ChiSox are to Chicago as the Mets are to NYC (more beloved franchises with which to compete) and that the Sox play in the middle of nowhere…but Chicago is the nation’s 3rd largest city and the Sox spent a ton of money during the offseason, were expected to compete this year, and had some early season success.
Wednesday night it was 65 degrees for the game between the ChiSox and the A’s, yet paid attendance was only 16,523 — don’t know how many fewer people actually showed up.
Yet no one is talking about the anemic attendance for the Sox while that story line was beaten to death the previous week for the Cleveland games that featured terrible weather, a zero-spending offseason, and low-to-no expectations for the season.
@PNR – they Chicago fans must have seen that the lowly Indians and Royals are ahead of them in the standings and given up on the season 🙂
piling on: because it sure seems like their bullpen has 🙂
@5: Spot on. I’ll continue to beat the ‘baseball system is broken’ drum for as long as it takes to fix it, because baseball continues to lose fans in the medium to small markets due to the inequities of the system. Ever notice that those who bemoan parity, particularly in the NFL, are primarily in the large markets? There’s a reason for that. Parity benefits the sport overall; imbalance benefits the large markets..those same markets that are on TV all the time in non market areas. It’s not a sustainable model.
I promise you right now that there will be more rumps in those seats tonight compared to the opening homestand.
With Cavs games now officially ending for the season, I wonder if some of the fans that were filling the Q will start to wander over to the Jake instead?
I don’t think that MLB realizes they are killing baseball by haveing such a stacked deck for the big market teams.
If you watch any of the major networks, the only teams that matter are NYY, Bos, NYM, and the Phillies. I caught some of the Sunday night “epic” NYY/Bos game and every promo for the national games on ESPN/MLB Network the following week involved either NYY or Bos. Not to mention the first 10 minutes of seemingly every ESPN show filled with “Whats wrong with the Red Sox” talk.
If MLB trains fans their teams don’t matter, then this is what they get. The NBA is heading down the same road where if your outside one of the major/good party cities, your team is an afterthought which is leading to financial issues in a number of smaller markets…
Just like some say that the 455 sell outs were a “perfect storm”, MLB has created their own perfect storm with the low attendance due to the broken baseball system.
I’m just glad the facts are finally coming out about attendance so far this season around the league. I was sick and tired of local media squawking “Where’s the fans!? Where’s the fans!?”
Had they checked the box scores they would have noticed that many other parks were drawing low numbers too. But, that would have required research and it’s easier to just report on what everyone else is reporting about.
I’ll be at the Tribe game on Saturday… if it’s not rained out… :/
A lot of you meander around the point but miss it. Yes, ESPN hails the Yanks, Boston and Philly but they’re immature elites who know and care nothing about anything but the east coast and making $ so they don’t matter.
The NFL & NBA put out a boring product that’s not fan-friendly and charge 10 times more than MLB yet draw. Why? Because the media is very anti baseball. It’s too traditional and in this trendy era, they dont want people to watch anything “traditional.”
Baseball is CHEAP and fan-friendly. And like you’all said, Indians and others have great deals. If you dont want to pay the beer/food prices, eat before and after as I do.
Baseball, to me, is the best sport by far and I attended as much as I can. It’s shameful that folks in Cleveland watch the awful Cavs and horric Browns games but cannot fill up The Jake.
I live 300 miles from the nearest ballpark yet still get to 10-12 games per year.
Why doesn’t anyone ever mention the supply demand thing? There are 8 home football games a year? and 80 baseball. 80 thats so many. This on top of the fact that there is no parity in baseball makes it a bad product for mainstream America.