Relocation and the effect on attendance (March 5, 2004)
I'm not surprised by the results here. However, this is an important statement
Fans choose which team they will follow early in life, and it’s usually not easy to pry that away from them, regardless of what the team does.
The fallout here is that if you have more teams to choose from, a 7yr old kid will start to choose from among 3 teams and not 2. I am sure that the NJ Devils are building a good fan base based on their 1993-2004 teams, and we'll only see the benefit of this 10 to 20 years down the line.
What would be better is to look at how many new Devils fans are being born compared to new Ranger and Islander fans. The only thing preventing the Devils from having more fans than the Rangers is the mindset of the kid's parents, and if the kid is exposed to more Ranger than Devil stuff.
--posted by TangoTiger at 10:19 AM EDT
Posted 11:01 a.m.,
March 5, 2004
(#1) -
Travis M Nelson(e-mail)
(homepage)
This is an interesting point, and probably a valid one, though also one that likely can't be researched in any kind of short order. (10-20 years, as you suggest)
However, the general trend of attendance, for MLB at least, is still upwards. The average attendance in 2003 it was over 28,000/game, while 20 years ago it was 21,593/game. 20 years before that it was 12,648, and in 1943 it was less than half of that.
While I don't honestly think that the MLB average will be 42,000 in 2023, it would seem that this upward trend is enough to help compensate for the availability of a third franchise in a market that already holds far more fans than the next two markets combined.
More fans will still come to watch a team play if they're good, and more lifelong allegiances to teams will be born for a good one than a bad one, regardless of the possible options.
Posted 11:45 a.m.,
March 5, 2004
(#2) -
tangotiger
I just think that if you have 10 million people born in NJ in the next 10 years, and 1 million of them will be baseball fans, maybe 250,000 of them would become NJ Expos fans and reject their fathers' allegiances to Yanks or Mets.
No question that there are enough fans to handle 3 or 4 franchises in the NY area. The Yanks and Mets want them all to themselves.
Posted 1:38 p.m.,
March 5, 2004
(#3) -
Gary Geiger Counter
FWIW, I grew up in Connecticut east of Hartford. It was definitely Red Sox territory and Patriots territory, but my dad considered the Patriots an expansion team. So I wound up rooting for the Sox and the NY Giants.
Posted 1:48 p.m.,
March 5, 2004
(#4) -
RMc, the only living Tigers fan
Fans choose which team they will follow early in life, and it’s usually not easy to pry that away from them, regardless of what the team does.
See above.
Posted 9:35 p.m.,
March 9, 2004
(#5) -
Fish Teaser
Although ballpark revenue may not be heavily affected, the lucrative television contracts may take big hit when there is a new guy in town. Of course, Cub games are more valuable to advertisers than White Sox games (although the trib company adjusts broadcasting revenue so that the Cubs actually report LESS but that's another story) but a television carrier may opt for the cheaper alternative. Or, at least, the threat of doing so could hamper the team formerly enjoying a market monopoly into selling its rights for less. Angelos may have little argument for impact on gate receipts but there could be a very real threat to his ability to squeeze more cash out of cable companies which would affect revenue in a significant way.