Tampa Bay Rays

Tampa Bay Rays

Tampa Bay Rays’ Tropicana Field has registered the second lowermost fan base audience in 2019. This Major League Baseball (MLB) team average attendance for the home games is very low. The major reason for this drastic attendance is due to the location of the park in Florida. There is no way one can blame the facility but the location of the park and the raised nuclear fallout shelter contracted to house baseball is the problem.

The baseball park is inaccessible for a large number of fans in the market of  Tampa Bay. Jozsa (2016) suggests that the location of the stadium renders it accessible to only South Tampa and South Pinellas (Jozsa 2016). The overall population of these areas is somewhat above 500,000. From Seminole Heights to East and North and from Largo north in the Pinellas, it is impossible to attend a game for most working individuals (Martinez, 2015). The bottleneck of routes and distance covered to St. Petersburg has significantly cut off the Rays from the fans of the team. This baseball stadium is practically accessible to less than 20 percent of the team’s fans. For instance, a single major road that conveys Rays fans between St. Petersburg and Tampa (Martinez, 2015). The route is very squeezed to serve the more fans living out in the Orlando that have to squeeze their way into the Tampa. After these baseball fans arrive at Tampa, they then have to funnel their way onto the bridge to reach St. Petersburg (Martinez, 2015). From Petersburg, the fans have to make their way into the Tampa Bay Rays Stadium to arrive at the park. Therefore,  the location of the stadium has left the game is a nightmare.

Part II

The Tampa Bay Rays are not the only team suffering from low attendance. This could be due to the high number of Baseball games in a year (162). Of the leagues’ 30 teams, 18 are experiencing an attendance drop (Lim, 2017). This is after a 2018 season in which attendance was down more than three million fans, an average of 1237 per game. MLB has been undertaking some widespread research on the possible impacts of a 154-game instead of 162 season due to a notion that their players might convey it up, however, the union has not brought it up but rather more focused on other concerns.

Although eight games might appear like a slight percent of the season, it can essentially pose a substantial reduction in profits for the MLB clubs. Statista.com, suggests that the Yankees made about $278MM in ticket returns during the year 2017 season (Lim, 2017). Therefore, bout 5% of game reduction can mean a loss of almost $14MM in sales of the ticket, without mentioning that this is worth 5% less in consideration with a television contract (Lim, 2017). Yankees are a great example in this regard; the small market clubs create much, less on an annual basis regarding ticket sales. Furthermore, it is not astonishing to recognize that 22 MLB clubs had no objection to the proposed 154 seasons (Lim, 2017).  Additionally,  the players’ salaries may be reduced as one of the business orders in the event of the success of the proposed shortened season. Altogether it is biased to expect the owner to compensate players a similar amount for participating 5% fewer games