Given that baseball attendance suffered greatly in the wake of the 1994 strike and that it’s status as America’s pastime isn’t what it used to be, this news from CNN/Money is rather surprising:
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — When it comes to sales, the National Football League used to dwarf Major League Baseball the way a defensive lineman towers over a batboy.
Not any longer. Baseball will finish this year with just over $6 billion in revenue, according to Bob DuPuy, Major League Baseball’s president and chief operating officer.
To put that into context, that puts baseball right on the heels of the more than $6 billion in revenue reported by the National Football League in 2006.
Yes, baseball has a lot more games from which to generate sales than the NFL, but that has always been the case. Simply put, baseball has done a much better job in the past few years of boosting its revenue beyond traditional sources, i.e. ticket sales and television broadcasting.
Baseball’s sales have increased 50 percent from 2004 and have doubled since 2000. The NFL’s sales grew at roughly half of baseball’s pace during the same time period.
DuPuy told me the level of growth this year surprised even him and Commissioner Bud Selig. He attributed the gains to more competitive balance in the game, which has helped improve attendance for teams in smaller markets such as the National League champion Colorado Rockies and Milwaukee Brewers, which was in the race for a division title up until the final week of the season.
This will make it harder for the owners to cry poverty the next time they are negotiating with the player’s union, but it’s also demonstration of the fact that revenue sharing and free agency, which have done a lot to bring competitive balance into the game, are paying off nicely.
