He has been called "The Showcase." He's so mysterious that no one is quite sure how to spell his name. And he is coming to MLB.
Yoenis Céspedes is not just the latest baseball player to defect from Cuba—he is being called the best position player to emerge from the island in a generation. The American baseball community is on pins and needles about where he'll play—and how much money will be thrown at the talented outfielder. The most recent reports indicate that his services will be awarded to one of six teams: the Cubs, Indians, Marlins, Orioles, Tigers, and White Sox.
All six of these teams have needs in the outfield, which obviously explains their interest. But only one absolutely needs Céspedes. It's the Miami Marlins, and after the spending spree that that team perpetrated at last month's Winter Meetings, it will be a major disappointment if they don't land him.
You see, the Marlins are writing a new chapter in the annals of franchise history. They've rebranded themselves from "Florida Marlins" to "Miami Marlins" in conjunction with the debut of a much-hyped new ballpark in 2012. As evidenced by their free-agent binge, they're seizing the moment to transform a moribund franchise into a competitive, popular team that South Florida can be proud of. But to build a consistently strong fan base, they need more than a contending team. They need a smart business approach.
Yoenis Céspedes fits the second objective just as well as he does the first. Few places in the United States are so synonymous with a given ethnicity or immigrant community as Miami is with Cuban-Americans. As of the 2010 census, Miami-Dade County was 34.3% Cuban, outnumbering other Hispanic ethnicities (30.7%) and almost eclipsing all non-Hispanic ethnicities combined (35%). It is the unquestioned epicenter of Cuban culture in the US; in fact, Miami-Dade contains 47.9% of all Cuban-Americans nationwide. (My favorite stat: of the 101 cities with the highest Cuban-American population, 97 are in South Florida.) For the Marlins to truly become Miami's team, they need to make fans out of this community.
With Cuba's rich baseball tradition, it shouldn't be an uphill battle to do so. But the single biggest step toward capturing that market would be to sign the most exciting Cuban player in the game today. Hometown heroes have always been a valuable commodity in baseball, from Tony Gwynn to Jason Heyward. Céspedes isn't a conventional hometown hero, of course, but to Florida's million-plus Cuban-Americans, he might as well be. Already a hero among Cuban-American baseball fans, he would drive them to the seats on a regular basis if he makes New Marlins Ballpark his home. He's a natural fit for a fan favorite in Miami like nowhere else; if the team wants to sell jerseys, they'd do well to make sure his name is on one of them. And how better to build a long-term fan base than to get the children of your city on board? Kids in particular will seek out a baseball idol whom they can relate to; Céspedes is that for Miami's young Cuban-Americans.
Signing Céspedes could be an even bigger boon for the Marlins than that, though. If Céspedes becomes the superstar he is projected to be, he'll earn the admiration of Cuban-Americans nationwide, giving the Marlins the chance to be a team with national appeal. The Mariners and Red Sox cashed in on Ichiro Suzuki's and Daisuke Matsuzaka's popularity in Japan in much the same way.
Some may call this pandering, and that's understandable. Bitterness arose when it appeared that the team coveted Albert Pujols over Prince Fielder because the latter was not Latino (although those in the know dismiss such theories). But while the Marlins certainly shouldn't discriminate against any players for their ethnicity, it's perfectly all right for them to put in extra effort to woo a player who jibes with their natural constituency. Even as, yes, the team makes money from the marriage, it also does a service to the largest segment of its fan base. It gives them a player they can relate to—someone who, like them or their ancestors, escaped from communist rule to make a better life; someone who is more likely than either Fielder or Pujols to make inroads, or even a permanent home, in their community. (Cuban-American singer Gloria Estefan, for example, has used her success for her hometown's benefit; she's active in Miami as a businessowner, philanthropist, and activist.)
Indeed, landing in Miami is also probably a good outcome for Céspedes himself. Players making the leap from Nippon Professional Baseball often speak of a comfort level achieved by joining teams with other Japanese players; a Cuban defector would likely have a similar desire to feel at home. Granted, Céspedes would probably be "most comfortable" in whatever city offers him the most money, but if that's Miami, he could count on a community and culture that he can relate to just as much as they can relate to him.
Despite all the sense this makes, there is also the sense that Miami may be reluctant to pay Céspedes's rumored asking price ($50 million guaranteed for an MLB rookie is, to put it mildly, risky). But if there is any team for which Céspedes is worth the steep investment, it is the Marlins; indeed, it would be foolish of them not to capitalize on one of the few regional advantages that they do have. At the very least, the Marlins understand the exciting possibilities that Céspedes represents for them: team president David Samson put it best recently when he quite rightly declared, "He should not be anywhere but Miami."
Showing posts with label Marlins. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Marlins. Show all posts
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Is High Attendance in Miami a Fish Story?
In my last post, I laid out the argument for why the Miami Marlins should be optimistic about their attendance statistics next year. If I do say so myself, it was a convincing argument—with graphs and everything!—but, alas, it is a misleading one. Everything in that post is still correct, mind you, so Floridians should feel free to find a silver lining here. But look deeper into the same data and you'll find that the Marlins' attendance picture is a lot cloudier than the team would like.
As in the last post, it would behoove us to start by looking at the effect of a new ballpark on gate receipts. Here is the pertinent graph from last time:
We already discussed the impressive surge that a team receives from a new stadium. Conveniently left out of the "good news" post, however, was the dip back down that typically occurs during the stadium's second season. Just as a new park draws in a median 7,563 new fans per game in its first season, it loses a median 6,290 fans in the second year—essentially, as the graph shows in most cases, returning to square one. The two teams that sustained the increases, the 2010 Yankees and 2007 Cardinals, are both teams with consistently high attendance anyway; unlike the others, they didn't experience a bump when moving into the new stadium to begin with (what doesn't go up won't come down). And oh yeah—they also both celebrated World Series championships in their new parks' inaugural seasons.
For hope in breaking this trend, the Marlins might look to the 2011 Minnesota Twins, whose attendance dipped only slightly from 2010, their first year in Target Field. While it's too early to say if the Twins will be an exception to the rule (Great American Ballpark and PETCO Park both hung in there in their second seasons as well, but they eventually came down to earth), it is encouraging that the Twins have hit nearly 40,000 fans at every Target Field game after failing to crack 30,000 at the old Metrodome every year this century. Miami might hope that its transition from a Metrodome-esque multi-purpose prison to the bells and whistles of not-yet-corporately-sponsored New Marlins Ballpark will produce similar results: a fan base that sticks around due to the sheer attractiveness of the park. I wouldn't hold my breath, though—over the past decade, the Twins have built a rather devoted fan base whose true interest in the team is probably better reflected in the Target Field attendance figures anyway. It seems unlikely that the Marlins, in baseball-apathetic South Florida, have a parallel hidden fan base that is straining to burst out of the woodwork.
This line of thinking got me wondering. Aren't there some teams, such as the Red Sox and Cubs, who simply have a deeper and more devoted fan base than others? Anecdotally, this would certainly seem to be the case, and the suspicion prompted me to take a second look at the correlation between attendance and wins. Although my last post found an extremely tenuous relationship between the two, I decided to isolate for another variable—team—to double-check. Here is a graph showing the correlation between 2001-2011 attendance and wins for all teams in the NL East:
As you can see, four of the teams still show basically no relationship, but two of them show a strong one. The graphs for other divisions show a similar pattern, leading us to a new conclusion. The correlation between wins and attendance is not weak because wins matter only an eensy-weensy bit; rather, it is weak because wins matter quite a bit for some teams and not at all for others. It turns out that there are three types of teams:
1. Perennially Popular. These franchises draw fans by the boatload regardless of the quality of the team they field. In the NL East, the Braves fit this mold, hitting 30,000-35,000 fans per game every year despite a wildly varying win total. Other examples are exactly who you'd expect: the Yankees, Red Sox, Cubs, Cardinals, etc.
2. Bandwagon. Not to say that these franchises have fairweather fans, but they clearly show up when the team is successful and stay home when it's not. NL East examples are the Mets and the Phillies (yes, Philadelphia, I don't disagree with how devoted you are now—but where were you back in the Robert Person era?). Others include the Brewers, Tigers, and Mariners.
3. Fan-Repellant. Lastly, there are the franchises that just can't seem to fill their parks, no matter how hard they try or how much they win. (Well, more accurately, fan-repellant teams often do show a strong relationship between winning and attendance—they just draw 10,000 when they lose, 15,000 when they're OK, and 20,000 when they win.) Again, the list is easy to guess based on conventional wisdom: Tampa Bay and Oakland are the most infamous. Others like Pittsburgh and Kansas City might fit in this category as well, but this is harder to say for certain because they've never been successful enough to create a bandwagon. The NL East is represented in this category by the erstwhile Expos... and the Marlins.
Uh-oh, Miami. For those of you who asked after the last post, "What's the catch?", this is it. But let us not forget that wins never showed themselves to have much of an impact on the Marlins' attendance, even in the optimistic half of this analysis. Surely the other, stronger trends will discredit these categories—say, the combined win total of the previous and current seasons:
Er, maybe not. Even when using a different variable, the teams still break down into the same three basic categories; we now have confirmation. But just to triple-check, how about the number of wins from the previous season:
Still the Mets and Phillies have the most significant correlations, and still the Marlins are in the second division of attendance. You probably won't be surprised, then, to learn that hype doesn't position them any better. While the Marlins do have the division's tightest correlation with Vegas odds, it does them little good in trying to draw more fans, in absolute terms, than perennially popular or bandwagon teams:
All four graphs show that the Marlins' previously established attendance patterns are only a part of their third-category—"Fan-Repellant"—identity. As much as expectations and especially hype help this team draw, they have never exceeded an average of 22,871 fans per game. According to their attendance-vs.-hype trendline, the Marlins' ceiling—and this would be if they had a 100% chance of winning the World Series—is 35,050 fans per game. Like other teams in the fan-repellant category, they face the problem of far-too-rapidly diminishing returns: gains that are undeniable, yet so incremental that they run out of room to grow.
The graphs drive home a point that my previous post purposefully left out: context. It's painfully obvious from the visuals how many fewer fans the Marlins draw, even when they're on the top of their game, than the powerhouses in New York, Philadelphia, and Atlanta. Even a miserable Phillies or Mets season would be a good attendance year for the Marlins.
So after all that, it turns out that the single greatest determinant of attendance isn't wins, or even hype—it's whether you play in a "good baseball town." To Miamians, that hardly seems fair. So their team is doomed never to attract support? They'll tread water for a few decades and then move on to a different city?
Again, not exactly. I'm reluctant to believe that there are just intrinsic factors about Boston and St. Louis that are nonexistent in Miami or Kansas City. I do think that is part of it: Montréal, for instance, has a completely different culture from American cities; baseball always seemed an awkward fit in separatist, Francophone Québec. And baseball faces an uphill battle in the South (including Florida), where it will probably always take a backseat to college football. But there are cities, such as Pittsburgh or Cincinnati, that used to be "good baseball towns" and yet have faded away in recent years. Likewise, today's "good baseball towns" have not always been so. The possibility at least exists, then, for Miami to develop into a bandwagon team, or even a perennially popular one.
So what long-term paradigm shifts are capable of bumping a team from one attendance-predictive category to another? We can take a stab at it by looking at what each category has in common (other than actual attendance). In a post full of statistical analysis, this is complete theorizing, but here are a few ideas:
1. Ballparks. Fan-repellant teams usually have ugly ones. Perennially popular teams usually have stadiums that are destinations, either because they're historical landmarks or anchor popular or centrally located neighborhoods.
2. Dynasties. Many perennially popular franchises are league powerhouses not just for one or two seasons, but for years on end. The longer that something is trendy, the more time it will take to go out of style.
3. History. List the perennially popular teams, and you've got a pretty good approximation of the original AL and NL teams from the turn of the century, especially those that have never been relocated. If your grandfather grew up rooting for the Cardinals, you will too.
4. Marketing. The Red Sox haven't sold out 712 consecutive games just because Boston is the bee's knees. They've developed a masterful marketing plan that involves the now-sacred notion of "Red Sox Nation" and high community involvement on the part of the team.
5. Economy and demographics. I have a feeling that teams like Cincinnati and Pittsburgh would do better if the Rust Belt hadn't been hit so hard during the current recession. The once-proud cities of Detroit and Cleveland are also losing population—and therefore potential customers—at an alarming rate.
6. Geography. Yes, MLB teams in areas with less competition from other sports (college football in the South, hockey in Canada) will have an easier go of it, but, again, it's not insurmountable.
7. Television. Perennially popular teams often seem to have their own TV networks: YES for the Yankees, TBS for Ted Turner and the Braves, or WGN in Chicago. Even the Orioles' MASN might be responsible for bringing more fans to Camden Yards than you would probably expect. Bringing games into people's homes is obviously a great way to build a team's mass appeal.
Some of these are factors that the Marlins can control. Others, unfortunately, are intrinsic obstacles that the Marlins must succeed in spite, not because, of. All of them, though, will take time and patience to develop or overcome—more time than the quick fix of an offseason spending spree. The good news for Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria is that he has actually done everything right so far: built a new park, laid the foundation for a long-term winner, and rebranded the franchise with a new name and new logo. The bad news is that these things alone won't catapult Miami out of the bottom tier. It's going to take more work and a long-term dedication to this plan (something the Marlins have had trouble with in the past).
This has been a pessimistic post for the Marlins. But for the final word on the state of Miami's attendance going forward, we must combine the findings from the earlier post as well. If you take their 15/1 World Series odds, apply it to the tight correlation that Miami-specific attendance has with Las Vegas, and add a ballpark estimate of 10,000 additional fans for the first season of the new stadium, the Marlins should expect to draw 31,909 fans per game in 2012. That's a solid number, especially for a stadium with only 37,000 seats. But in 2013 and beyond, if nothing else is done, that number will fall—even if they sustain those high World Series odds, they'd top out at only 21,909 as long as they remain a third-rate franchise. Such a decline, sadly, would just confirm their reputation as a low-drawing franchise and make it harder for them afford the expensive new players inked at the winter meetings. It's that reputation—and, frankly, that reality—that the team must break with in order to break even.
As in the last post, it would behoove us to start by looking at the effect of a new ballpark on gate receipts. Here is the pertinent graph from last time:
We already discussed the impressive surge that a team receives from a new stadium. Conveniently left out of the "good news" post, however, was the dip back down that typically occurs during the stadium's second season. Just as a new park draws in a median 7,563 new fans per game in its first season, it loses a median 6,290 fans in the second year—essentially, as the graph shows in most cases, returning to square one. The two teams that sustained the increases, the 2010 Yankees and 2007 Cardinals, are both teams with consistently high attendance anyway; unlike the others, they didn't experience a bump when moving into the new stadium to begin with (what doesn't go up won't come down). And oh yeah—they also both celebrated World Series championships in their new parks' inaugural seasons.
For hope in breaking this trend, the Marlins might look to the 2011 Minnesota Twins, whose attendance dipped only slightly from 2010, their first year in Target Field. While it's too early to say if the Twins will be an exception to the rule (Great American Ballpark and PETCO Park both hung in there in their second seasons as well, but they eventually came down to earth), it is encouraging that the Twins have hit nearly 40,000 fans at every Target Field game after failing to crack 30,000 at the old Metrodome every year this century. Miami might hope that its transition from a Metrodome-esque multi-purpose prison to the bells and whistles of not-yet-corporately-sponsored New Marlins Ballpark will produce similar results: a fan base that sticks around due to the sheer attractiveness of the park. I wouldn't hold my breath, though—over the past decade, the Twins have built a rather devoted fan base whose true interest in the team is probably better reflected in the Target Field attendance figures anyway. It seems unlikely that the Marlins, in baseball-apathetic South Florida, have a parallel hidden fan base that is straining to burst out of the woodwork.
This line of thinking got me wondering. Aren't there some teams, such as the Red Sox and Cubs, who simply have a deeper and more devoted fan base than others? Anecdotally, this would certainly seem to be the case, and the suspicion prompted me to take a second look at the correlation between attendance and wins. Although my last post found an extremely tenuous relationship between the two, I decided to isolate for another variable—team—to double-check. Here is a graph showing the correlation between 2001-2011 attendance and wins for all teams in the NL East:
As you can see, four of the teams still show basically no relationship, but two of them show a strong one. The graphs for other divisions show a similar pattern, leading us to a new conclusion. The correlation between wins and attendance is not weak because wins matter only an eensy-weensy bit; rather, it is weak because wins matter quite a bit for some teams and not at all for others. It turns out that there are three types of teams:
1. Perennially Popular. These franchises draw fans by the boatload regardless of the quality of the team they field. In the NL East, the Braves fit this mold, hitting 30,000-35,000 fans per game every year despite a wildly varying win total. Other examples are exactly who you'd expect: the Yankees, Red Sox, Cubs, Cardinals, etc.
2. Bandwagon. Not to say that these franchises have fairweather fans, but they clearly show up when the team is successful and stay home when it's not. NL East examples are the Mets and the Phillies (yes, Philadelphia, I don't disagree with how devoted you are now—but where were you back in the Robert Person era?). Others include the Brewers, Tigers, and Mariners.
3. Fan-Repellant. Lastly, there are the franchises that just can't seem to fill their parks, no matter how hard they try or how much they win. (Well, more accurately, fan-repellant teams often do show a strong relationship between winning and attendance—they just draw 10,000 when they lose, 15,000 when they're OK, and 20,000 when they win.) Again, the list is easy to guess based on conventional wisdom: Tampa Bay and Oakland are the most infamous. Others like Pittsburgh and Kansas City might fit in this category as well, but this is harder to say for certain because they've never been successful enough to create a bandwagon. The NL East is represented in this category by the erstwhile Expos... and the Marlins.
Uh-oh, Miami. For those of you who asked after the last post, "What's the catch?", this is it. But let us not forget that wins never showed themselves to have much of an impact on the Marlins' attendance, even in the optimistic half of this analysis. Surely the other, stronger trends will discredit these categories—say, the combined win total of the previous and current seasons:
Er, maybe not. Even when using a different variable, the teams still break down into the same three basic categories; we now have confirmation. But just to triple-check, how about the number of wins from the previous season:
Still the Mets and Phillies have the most significant correlations, and still the Marlins are in the second division of attendance. You probably won't be surprised, then, to learn that hype doesn't position them any better. While the Marlins do have the division's tightest correlation with Vegas odds, it does them little good in trying to draw more fans, in absolute terms, than perennially popular or bandwagon teams:
All four graphs show that the Marlins' previously established attendance patterns are only a part of their third-category—"Fan-Repellant"—identity. As much as expectations and especially hype help this team draw, they have never exceeded an average of 22,871 fans per game. According to their attendance-vs.-hype trendline, the Marlins' ceiling—and this would be if they had a 100% chance of winning the World Series—is 35,050 fans per game. Like other teams in the fan-repellant category, they face the problem of far-too-rapidly diminishing returns: gains that are undeniable, yet so incremental that they run out of room to grow.
The graphs drive home a point that my previous post purposefully left out: context. It's painfully obvious from the visuals how many fewer fans the Marlins draw, even when they're on the top of their game, than the powerhouses in New York, Philadelphia, and Atlanta. Even a miserable Phillies or Mets season would be a good attendance year for the Marlins.
So after all that, it turns out that the single greatest determinant of attendance isn't wins, or even hype—it's whether you play in a "good baseball town." To Miamians, that hardly seems fair. So their team is doomed never to attract support? They'll tread water for a few decades and then move on to a different city?
Again, not exactly. I'm reluctant to believe that there are just intrinsic factors about Boston and St. Louis that are nonexistent in Miami or Kansas City. I do think that is part of it: Montréal, for instance, has a completely different culture from American cities; baseball always seemed an awkward fit in separatist, Francophone Québec. And baseball faces an uphill battle in the South (including Florida), where it will probably always take a backseat to college football. But there are cities, such as Pittsburgh or Cincinnati, that used to be "good baseball towns" and yet have faded away in recent years. Likewise, today's "good baseball towns" have not always been so. The possibility at least exists, then, for Miami to develop into a bandwagon team, or even a perennially popular one.
So what long-term paradigm shifts are capable of bumping a team from one attendance-predictive category to another? We can take a stab at it by looking at what each category has in common (other than actual attendance). In a post full of statistical analysis, this is complete theorizing, but here are a few ideas:
1. Ballparks. Fan-repellant teams usually have ugly ones. Perennially popular teams usually have stadiums that are destinations, either because they're historical landmarks or anchor popular or centrally located neighborhoods.
2. Dynasties. Many perennially popular franchises are league powerhouses not just for one or two seasons, but for years on end. The longer that something is trendy, the more time it will take to go out of style.
3. History. List the perennially popular teams, and you've got a pretty good approximation of the original AL and NL teams from the turn of the century, especially those that have never been relocated. If your grandfather grew up rooting for the Cardinals, you will too.
4. Marketing. The Red Sox haven't sold out 712 consecutive games just because Boston is the bee's knees. They've developed a masterful marketing plan that involves the now-sacred notion of "Red Sox Nation" and high community involvement on the part of the team.
5. Economy and demographics. I have a feeling that teams like Cincinnati and Pittsburgh would do better if the Rust Belt hadn't been hit so hard during the current recession. The once-proud cities of Detroit and Cleveland are also losing population—and therefore potential customers—at an alarming rate.
6. Geography. Yes, MLB teams in areas with less competition from other sports (college football in the South, hockey in Canada) will have an easier go of it, but, again, it's not insurmountable.
7. Television. Perennially popular teams often seem to have their own TV networks: YES for the Yankees, TBS for Ted Turner and the Braves, or WGN in Chicago. Even the Orioles' MASN might be responsible for bringing more fans to Camden Yards than you would probably expect. Bringing games into people's homes is obviously a great way to build a team's mass appeal.
Some of these are factors that the Marlins can control. Others, unfortunately, are intrinsic obstacles that the Marlins must succeed in spite, not because, of. All of them, though, will take time and patience to develop or overcome—more time than the quick fix of an offseason spending spree. The good news for Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria is that he has actually done everything right so far: built a new park, laid the foundation for a long-term winner, and rebranded the franchise with a new name and new logo. The bad news is that these things alone won't catapult Miami out of the bottom tier. It's going to take more work and a long-term dedication to this plan (something the Marlins have had trouble with in the past).
This has been a pessimistic post for the Marlins. But for the final word on the state of Miami's attendance going forward, we must combine the findings from the earlier post as well. If you take their 15/1 World Series odds, apply it to the tight correlation that Miami-specific attendance has with Las Vegas, and add a ballpark estimate of 10,000 additional fans for the first season of the new stadium, the Marlins should expect to draw 31,909 fans per game in 2012. That's a solid number, especially for a stadium with only 37,000 seats. But in 2013 and beyond, if nothing else is done, that number will fall—even if they sustain those high World Series odds, they'd top out at only 21,909 as long as they remain a third-rate franchise. Such a decline, sadly, would just confirm their reputation as a low-drawing franchise and make it harder for them afford the expensive new players inked at the winter meetings. It's that reputation—and, frankly, that reality—that the team must break with in order to break even.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Wins Don't Fill Seats—But the Marlins Will
When the Miami Marlins left the baseball winter meetings earlier this month, they had committed as much money that week ($191 million) as their combined payrolls in the previous five seasons ($194 million). The baseball world was stunned; how could the Marlins be sure of affording all this? The franchise formerly known as the Florida Marlins had always been the biggest penny-pincher in Major League Baseball—because they were perennially last in the league in attendance. At the winter meetings, however, owner Jeffrey Loria let his actions make his argument for him: with the Marlins' beautiful new ballpark (set to open this season) and a roster newly infused with championship-caliber talent, the fans will follow.
Indeed, it's widely accepted in the industry that attendance rises and falls with a team's fortunes—that the surest way to a good profit is a good baseball team. (Likewise, it's believed that the quickest way to a good profit is a new stadium.) But as we've learned over the past decade, statistics can shoot down a lot of these widely held assumptions. So is this one fact or fiction? Is Loria's crusade to field a competitive team a brilliant business scheme, or is it going to run his Marlins into the ground?
To answer these questions, I compiled full attendance statistics for all 30 teams from 2001 to 2011 and scoured them for patterns. The first question I zeroed in on was the one I figured would be simplest: the new ballpark.
If history is any indication, the Marlins are right to be optimistic about their attendance in the immediate short term. Teams that have built a new ballpark in the past 11 years typically saw a dramatic spike in attendance (a median increase of 7,563 fans per game) in the stadium's inaugural season:
Even better for the Marlins is that teams moving from unattractive, multi-sport stadiums (e.g., the Phillies from Veterans Stadium or the Padres from Qualcomm) saw particularly big increases. (The Marlins are moving from unattractive, football-centric Sun Life Stadium.) In contrast, they have nothing in common with the teams that actually lost fans as a result of a stadium switch. The Yankees, Mets, and Cardinals all had extremely high attendance figures prior to the move; their numbers had nowhere to go but down. In addition, they were all moving out of historic ballparks whose attendance statistics in their final seasons were probably inflated by nostalgia.
The Marlins therefore look pretty certain to gain about 10,000 fans per game in 2012. But after that, will their winning ways (assuming they do win) keep attendance up? Here's how attendance figures for all 30 teams have matched up with wins over the past 11 seasons (just for kicks, teams with new ballparks are marked in red):
You can see that there's a vague trend, but the correlation is extremely loose; a 90-win team has been known to draw anywhere from 16,000 to 53,000 per game. So wins actually don't fill seats; something else has to be at play.
Could it be excitement left over from the previous season? Do some quick math, and you'll find that teams that made the playoffs the previous season average 8,911 more fans per game (36,989) than teams that missed out (28,078)—World Series winners average 10,661 more (38,739 average daily attendance the next season). Here are daily attendance figures correlated with wins in the previous baseball season:
Same problem (the correlation is slightly better, but it still has no predictive value). Surely, though, attendance is a combination of past winning and present winning. So here's attendance compared to total wins over the current and the previous season:
We're doing a little better each time, but we're still not there yet. It may be time to face the possibility that attendance has nothing to do with material wins at all. But what, then?
Of all people, Jeffrey Loria might have the answer. The 2012 Marlins haven't won a game yet, and the industry consensus is that Miami is as excited about baseball as it has ever been. It's all about the hype, and Loria bought himself a boatload of it at the winter meetings. We saw the same thing last winter in Philadelphia, where Cliff Lee created a mountain of anticipation behind the Phillies; likewise, the Angels' signing of Albert Pujols has whipped that fan base into a ticket-buying frenzy.
Hype seems like an excellent predictor of ticket sales, but it is difficult to measure. However, there is one variable that necessarily takes into account everything that hype encompasses (offseason splashes, willingness to spend to win, performance the previous season, and a realistic assessment of future competitiveness): Vegas odds.
Here is a graph relating attendance to teams' chances of winning the World Series, based on odds assigned the February or March before the season starts:
It's far from perfect, but this is easily the best relationship that we've found. The old axiom that wins fill seats is therefore imprecise: winning (and a winning tradition) can certainly increase your team's hype, but it's that electricity in the air surrounding a squad that has a greater impact on attendance. (This makes sense, too, because hype is a product of many diverse factors, mirroring the many reasons that fans might give for deciding to buy tickets.) At a respectable 15/1 chance to win the World Series, the Marlins have to like that.
For Miami fans who still don't believe it—it gets better. Isolate the data for the Marlins and you get an even more compelling case for hype selling tickets in South Beach. Here are the Marlins' attendances over the past 11 seasons as related to wins:
No relationship at all; in SoFlo, wins are actually irrelevant. Fans do, however, pay some attention to the heights achieved by the Marlins in the previous season:
The two seasons factored together are somewhere in between:
But Jeffrey Loria must have really done his homework, because what drives Floridians to Sun Life Stadium more than anything else is hype (as represented by World Series odds):
Except for one outlier, it's even a pretty tight correlation.
At this point, I'm about ready to go invest in some José Reyes jerseys. (Stay away from the Hanley Ramírez ones for now, though.) And the Marlins front office has indeed done everything right—everything in their power, anyway—to boost attendance. But, unfortunately for the Marlins and their fans, this is only half the story—and the other half is decidedly more pessimistic about Miami's box-office future. In the next post I'll play devil's advocate to this idea that Marlins tickets are going to be a hot sell going forward—and the devil is in the details.
Stay tuned.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)