MLB Projecting 6 Percent Attendance Decline for 2009

While national television advertisers may still be knocking on Major League Baseball’s door (see MLB Sees Solid Early TV Ad Sales, Despite Recession), the league is bracing itself for a decline in attendance, according to today’s edition of the SportsBusiness Journal. Baseball sources said that based on ticket-sales efforts to date, the league will likely draw about 75 million fans for the season, a sum that would be below the totals for each of the last three seasons and about 6 percent below the sport’s high-water mark of 79.5 million in 2007. Individual clubs are in a day-to-day fight to stem against that or further declines by implementing a wide range of discounted ticket offers and delaying the start of single-game sales to dates closer to the start of the regular season. As further reported, MLB executives are hoping that events ahead of the regular season, as well as adjustments at the club level, will, as Eric Fisher reports, flat the new up. “There are a couple of barom...