Empty wallets, empty seats: Economy affecting sport attendance

Multimillionaire athletes telling fans to spend money to see them play - amid historic unemployment - seems terribly ungrateful to all but the most rabid sports fans.

Last week's comments by Tampa Bay Rays David Price and Evan Longoria struck a nerve. Longoria called Monday night's crowd of 12,000 "disheartening," and Price commented on Twitter that it was "embarrassing." The comments were the talk of the baseball world in the Bay area and beyond.

"I thought it was pretty insensitive what Price said," said Vince Gennaro, an adjunct professor at Columbia University and author of "Diamond Dollars," a book on baseball economics. "I don't think you can shame residents into spending their unemployment checks on watching Price pitch."

It's not just the Rays with empty seats.

The economy has cut deeply into everyone's disposable income and, consequently, their entertainment budget. Concert promoters and performing arts halls are selling fewer tickets, theme parks have fewer visitors and low attendance has resulted in two broadcast blackouts for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

But is it the wretched economy keeping people away from Rays and Bucs games or is it fan apathy, the drive to the stadium or something else?

At least in the Rays' case, you can't pin it all on the economy.

Sean Lux, a professor of entrepreneurship at the University of South Florida, ran a statistical analysis on Major League Baseball attendance for the Tribune. His conclusion: Winning percentage and the size of an area's population seem to drive attendance far more than a key economic figure - the unemployment rate.

His take is that factors including stadium location and a lack of corporate ticket sales are to blame.

No one doubts that the economy is hurting attendance in both sports. After all, the Bay area's unemployment rate is 12.6 percent - third-worst among major league cities.

The fallout is affecting:

Concerts. Live Nation, the country's biggest concert promoter, said its total attendance at concerts fell 5.7 percent in the three months ended June 30 when compared with the same three months of 2009.

Shows. The number of people attending shows at the David A. Straz Jr. Center for the Performing Arts in Tampa is down 12 percent from last year. However, that's partly because the center hosted fewer shows this year.

"Even as the economy gradually improves, there is uncertainty and doubt," said Michael Kilgore, the Straz Center's marketing vice president. "I've heard it called The New Normal or The New Frugality."

Theme parks. Busch Gardens officials wouldn't say whether their visitor counts are up or down, but a spokesman said the park was affected by everything from the Gulf oil spill to the Icelandic volcano, which prevented Europeans from reaching Florida.

Sports teams also are feeling the pinch.

The National Football League expects season ticket sales will be down 5 percent this year. Local television blackouts tied to insufficient ticket sales have hit the Oakland Raiders, San Diego Chargers and the Bucs. The Buffalo Bills and St. Louis Rams are close to having them, too, said NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy.

The league blames it foremost on the economy, he said. But the growth of fantasy football is having an impact, too, because many fans are more interested in what happens to the players on their fantasy teams - who could be on any of the 32 teams - than on their home team.

The rise of high-definition television and all-morning pre-game shows also is hurting, he said.

"The at-home experience has become so good that we're competing with ourselves," McCarthy said.

Rays leadership declined to comment on how much they think the economy is to blame. Average nightly attendance figures posted on ESPN.com show the Rays averaged about 22,900 fans this season, which was down about 1 percent from last year.

Although the Rays' attendance didn't drop much, the team started from a lower base. Its average attendance ranks 22nd out of 30 teams in Major League Baseball. The numbers suggest a winning season at least kept the Rays from falling further.

Other teams' attendance has plunged. The Cleveland Indians saw a 22 percent drop after winning just 43 percent of their games.

The Tribune talked to several Bucs season-ticket holders, Rays fans and some who are fans of both teams.

In the Bucs' case, most season-ticket holders surveyed were affected by the economy. They said they kept their personal tickets, but some who owned businesses didn't renew their corporate tickets or sold off extras. The Bucs' 3-13 record last year made their decision easier.

Linda Cagwin is among those who dropped tickets. She runs a title insurance firm in Tampa hit hard by the real estate bust. She kept her two personal tickets at Raymond James Stadium, but didn't renew her two corporate tickets.

"We were cutting expenses wherever we could," she said.

Tom Richardson of Lutz is a construction materials salesman who sold one of his Bucs season tickets to a friend. Business had been brutal, but has improved in the past year. He might have gotten rid of both tickets if they weren't lower-level.

"I've got great seats," Richardson said. "If I was up in the third level or something, I doubt if I would've signed up again."

To try to get a handle on the economy's impact, the Tribune asked Lux, an assistant professor in USF's business school, to crunch some numbers.

Last year, Lux also provided an analysis for the ABC Coalition, the group of civic leaders that studied whether the Rays need a new ballpark. His subcommittee's conclusions were controversial. The demographics and growth around Tropicana Field's home in downtown St. Petersburg generally aren't as good as other sites in St. Petersburg's Gateway area or in Hillsborough County, his study found.

Last week, Lux used statistical analysis to find the correlation between average home attendance for baseball's 30 teams and each area's unemployment rate, population and the teams' winning percentages.

Not surprisingly, winning percentage was tops. The correlation of winning percentage to average home attendance was 51 percent, which suggests a strong relationship. Translation: The more a team wins, the more people show up.

Next was the size of the area's population, with a correlation of 49 percent - again, a strong relationship.

But unemployment rate barely registers as a factor in attendance.

Lux compared the change in unemployment rates from 2009 to 2010 with the change in attendance during those years. Theoretically, attendance would drop more in cities where unemployment spiked the highest.

But there appeared to be no statistically significant relationship between the change in each city's unemployment rate and attendance. There also was no relationship between an area's overall unemployment rate - regardless of its change - and a team's attendance.

So you can't just chalk up the Rays' weak turnout to a crummy economy, at least not unemployment, Lux said.

So, what is behind the ballpark attendance blues?

Lux says you can blame the Rays' poor attendance on the Trop's location and the Bay area's lack of major corporations, which limits sales of season tickets.

"It's not the fans and it's not the team," Lux said.

Others attribute it to something else.

Wednesday night, Ron Bruce of Largo and Pat Armstrong of Bradenton turned out for the last Rays home game, when the team handed out 20,000 free tickets.

Bruce, a Pittsburgh native, said Bay area sports fans just aren't die-hards.

"Even high school football games in western Pennsylvania will draw 20,000 to 25,000 people," he said.

As the rain started pouring outside the Trop about 6 p.m., Brian Utaski, 29, and his wife, Elisa, of Tarpon Springs, huddled inside the domed stadium; Elisa cuddled a baby. Brian is unemployed, and she is a stay-at-home mom, but they still manage to make it to Rays games.

Their tickets were free Wednesday, but the night before they had paid for their seats. Even without a job, he doesn't blame the economy.

"We got level 2 press seats for 14 bucks," Brian said. "That's cheaper than the movies."