Seattle Mariners’ Playoff Return Could Jump-Start An Economic Resurgence

When the Seattle Mariners step to the plate against the Toronto Blue Jays on Friday night, it will officially mark the end of the longest active postseason drought in major North American sports—21 seasons.

Fueled by an exciting young core of talent, new business initiatives and renewed fan enthusiasm, this could be the moment that revives the once-proud franchise, which has languished in baseball’s mediocre middle for much of the past two decades.

The values of all sports franchises have skyrocketed over that span, but the Mariners’ 391% increase is the sixth-slowest growth rate among MLB clubs. In Forbes’ latest set of valuations, the Mariners, at $1.7 billion, rank 16th out of 30 teams in the league.

The three-game American League wild-card series will certainly be a financial shot in the arm, comparable to other anomaly sports events such as Saint Peters making a deep run in the NCAA basketball tournament. The official Mariners team store announced it had completely sold out of postseason merchandise within two days of Cal Raleigh’s playoff-clinching, walk-off home run last Friday night. T-Mobile Park is selling tickets for watch parties in the team’s home stadium this weekend, and tickets to potential future home games in the division series sold out within minutes, according to the team.

Even before the team knew it would make the postseason, team owner John Stanton told Forbes in July that he expected Seattle’s revenues to climb into the “top third” of the league over the next decade, an estimated jump from $319 million last year into the $400 million neighborhood, according to Forbes data.

Winning should help move the needle. Ilhan Geckil, managing director of the economic research firm Econ One, created a model to measure the effect of on-field success on team revenues, and by extension team valuations. Controlling for variables such as market size, median household income in the surrounding area, stadium ownership and other factors, his research found that over the past 12 years there was an undeniable correlation in MLB, even among powerhouse teams like the New York Yankees.

“(The Yankees) have a big fan base, their valuation is huge, so their team performance has limited value, but still,” Geckil says, “when we look at even for the Los Angeles Dodgers or Yankees, the team performance affected revenue figures.”

But winning in MLB doesn’t have as big of an impact on the bottom line as it used to. New streaming rights deals with AppleAAPL
and NBC will bring in $115 million annually, raising the league’s national media rights total to an average of $1.96 billion per season, up 26% from a year ago. That money gets distributed evenly to all 30 teams. The introduction of jersey patch and helmet decal advertisements will further bring in money independent of wins and losses. Meanwhile, game attendance, one factor Geckil found to be affected by performance, has declined steadily across the league since its peak in 2007. Geckil agrees that these factors could bring MLB closer to his findings for the NFL, where the financial impact of winning was “statistically insignificant.”

Ideally, shrewd business practices and on-field success would go hand-in-hand. But that certainly hasn’t been the case in Seattle for the last 21 years.

“At certain times it feels like the franchise is cursed,” says Jon Wells, a lifelong Mariners fan and the author of Shipwrecked: A Peoples’ History of the Seattle Mariners. “It kind of makes you feel that way, just because the focus hasn’t really been on winning for most of their history.”

Wells points to the trade of roster cornerstone Tino Martinez to cut costs in 1995, after the franchise made the playoffs for the first time in its history, followed by the trades of Ken Griffey Jr. in early 2000 and Alex Rodriguez that December as examples of the team’s profits-above-all mindset.

Still, in 2001, the Mariners were the epitome of success—a league-record 116 regular season wins, a second consecutive trip to the American League Championship Series, and perhaps the sport’s most marketable player, Ichiro Suzuki, who won both rookie of the year and MVP honors.

That year, Seattle pulled in $166 million in revenue, the third-most in the league, according to Forbes data, and it ranked as the sixth-most-valuable franchise at $373 million. Playing in a newly constructed stadium, it led the league in attendance in 2001, and again in 2002. Business was booming.

Yet there continued to be an emphasis on controlling spending, leading to the departure of several key players, plus manager Lou Piniella and general manager Pat Gillick. Then-team chairman Howard Lincoln became the public target of fan disapproval when he told the Seattle Times in 2002 that the franchise must prioritize its bottom line.

“The goal of the Mariners is not to win a World Series,” Lincoln said. “It is to field a competitive team year after year, to put itself in a position to win a World Series, and hope at some point that happens.” He added: “We absolutely have to make money. No question, end of story.”

The team finished last in its division seven times from 2004 to 2013, leading to a revolving door of managers, players and executives.

Ownership changed hands in 2016, when a group led by Western Wireless Corp. founder John Stanton and retired MicrosoftMSFT
executive Chris Larson took over a controlling interest from Nintendo of America. General manager Jerry Dipoto, who was retained in 2015, kept his job, and team president Catie Griggs joined in 2021.

Wells sees the Forbes story on Griggs from July, in which Stanton made his “top third” comment, as continued evidence of the franchise’s priorities.

“Instead of being excited about, wow, this team is having some success, it’s been a long time, the 14-game winning streak, we’re concerned about how to get more revenue, figure out ways to get people to spend more money on premium seating,” Wells says. “It’s not really what fans want to hear about; it’s not really what you want to hear your ownership group talk about, like this is our concern, not getting to the World Series.”

The two interests don’t necessarily have to compete. The team won 90 games last season for the first time since 2003, and this year, showing a willingness to spend, the club signed Julio Rodriguez—perhaps the best rookie to wear a Mariners uniform since Ichiro—to a 12-year mega-deal worth at least $210 million. Ace pitcher Luis Castillo signed a five-year, $108 million extension. And now the team has earned its long-awaited playoff bid.

A new postseason structure implemented this season adds one additional wild-card qualifier in each league. Although it’s unfair to compare, the third spot would have earned the Mariners a trip to the playoffs on four separate occasions over the course of the drought. Regardless, this year’s team finished three games clear of Tampa Bay to claim the AL’s second wild-card spot and a best-of-three series on the road against the Blue Jays. Complaints or not, Wells will be in Toronto for every game.

In the clubhouse, players and coaches have been staying on message in their interactions with media, saying they are not content with a playoff berth and instead want to make a deep run. If they do, they could bust the franchise’s other dubious MLB record: The Mariners are still the only current team never to have played in the World Series.