As An Owner, At What Point is Hosting a Game Not Worth It?

As the belated Opening Day celebrations have come to a close for all 30 MLB teams, we are reminded of the fact that the rest of the April games are not as sought-after of events.

With NBA playoffs kicking off, NHL playoffs on the way, and even The Masters taking some of the spotlight, this is the time of the year when baseball’s popularity hits its lowest.

In fact, looking back to 2019, the MLB’s average attendance for the season (28,317) was about 7% higher than the April attendance (26,631), which was benefited significantly by the outlier Dodgers, who averaged just over 47,500 per night. (FanGraphs)

Trends aside, these figures fail to explain the Oakland Athletics’ April attendance, which has been gaining plenty of attention this week against the Orioles.

For the As’ home opener, they had 17,500 in attendance, which was the worst in baseball this season.

If that was not troubling enough, the next three games had a total of 10,880 fans to finish the series. With 3,748 on Tuesday and 2,703 on Wednesday, the Athletics broke and re-broke their franchise’s lowest attendance total since 1980.

So, everything seems to be going according to plan.

The As are clearly entering the beginning of a hefty rebuild, which is evident when you ship out a combined 25 WAR from last year in the offseason while publicly airing the frustrations of stadium renovations in Oakland.

But, Oakland’s specific circumstances aside, their record-low attendance totals bring up an interesting hypothetical: at what point is it not even worth playing the game?

As we saw in the 2020 season, obviously the games are willing to be played without a single spectator in attendance if need be. But, according to Jeff Passan via Twitter, the Atlanta Braves ownership group Liberty Media averaged approximately a “$6 million-per-game revenue stream” in 2021.

While the Braves were one of the first teams to return to full capacity, only playing 6 games before changing the regulations, this revenue stream was produced in a year of impacted attendance. Atlanta averaged 29,490 fans per game in last year’s World Series run, which was 10% lower than in 2019.

So, looking back to the A’s, it is not known exactly what they are making each game since John Fisher’s financials are not public like the Braves were.

However, just by looking at their television deal ($1 billion for 21 years), the Athletics brings in roughly $294,000 gross income per game.

This clearly shows that even outside of the contractual obligation of the deal, playing the actual game is always going to be profitable.

But, if nobody is coming to the stadium, would closing the doors and just bringing in the TV revenue be the better profit?

According to Peter Dreier and Kelly Dandaele of The Nation, each team staffs about 800 food service workers and 500 maintenance employees. Even if hypothetically they are all being paid California minimum wage ($15 per hour) for a three-hour game, that comes out to $58, 500 a night.

Now, if you add this to the daily inventory of food and drinks purchased, the miscellaneous items required throughout the stadium, and let’s not forget the price to keep the in-arena power running, it adds to quite a hefty bill.

But how much is required of the fans to repay those bills?

In 2019, the average ticket price for the As was $24.30. If that is what the average price of admissions was going for during the Baltimore-Oakland series, $91,076 on Tuesday and $65,682 on Wednesday would merely put a dent in these debts.

But, the ticket inside the gates is only half of the expected revenue, with the other being food and merchandise.

According to Sport Management Degrees breakdown in 2012 (incorporating inflation), the average fan spends $31.50 per game.

This would allow $118,062 on Tuesday and $85,145 on Wednesday, thus obviously being the only team this year to hypothetically bring in under $100,000 in concessions this year.

Now, this is admittedly an under-investigated, over-simplified example that leaves out a multitude of factors that go into the expenses and income of owning a major league franchise.

However, the statement that the Oakland faithful are making is warranted, and just might be actually making an impact on Fisher’s bottom dollar.

The only problem is, that might be the final straw for the Athletics franchise residing in the Bay Area.