Eric Fisher has the details (hat tip: Maury):
Major League Baseball’s historic, half-decade run of marked economic expansion has been blunted, as the sport will end 2008 falling short of its initial projections on overall attendance and industry revenue.
With a week left in the regular season, MLB is off its record-setting attendance pace of 2007 by 0.5 percent and will almost certainly fail to surpass Commissioner Bud Selig’s oft-stated goal of 80 million, or even set a new league mark for the fifth straight season. The current attendance pace points to a final 2008 mark of about 78.5 million to 79.1 million, just shy of last year’s 79.5 million.
The league will set a new overall revenue mark, with current projections of more than $6.4 billion beating last year’s $6.075 billion by 5 percent, according to industry sources, but even that higher figure will settle in below the initial projection for 2008 of $6.5 billion.
There’s a very downbeat tone to this article, and I’m not really sure it’s necessary. A ~5.3% growth rate isn’t great, but it’s certainly not disastrous.
Now, there are certain indicators that baseball could be a bit concerned about. From Fisher:
Other specific indices for the game showed the challenge MLB, like nearly every sports property, faces in the current economic climate. Merchandise sales are flat compared with last year, even after a record-setting All-Star Game and heavy nostalgia-driven licensing efforts around the final seasons at Yankee Stadium and Shea Stadium.
National TV ratings are similarly lacking in vibrancy. Fox’s Saturday game of the week coverage was off by 17 percent compared with last year entering the season’s final two weekends, games on ESPN and ESPN2 are both off their 2007 paces, and Turner was averaging a disappointing 645,000 viewers for its new Sunday afternoon national coverage.
Honestly, I’m not sure what to make of the TV ratings. I didn’t think TBS did a very good job of marketing their package, but I can’t think of a reason off the top of my head that ESPN and Fox’s ratings would decline so much. Meanwhile, merchandise sales are largely a function of attendance, so it makes sense that they would be flat.
MLB simply hasn’t innovated much over the past 2-3 years, and its growth has slowed as a result. But that should change in a big way next year. The MLB Network could be an enormous cash cow, as will the new stadiums in New York. Even in this suboptimal economy, I would expect MLB’s growth rate to jump back into the double digits in 2009.
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