Do Home Runs Effect Attendance in Major League Baseball?
Abstract
One of the most memorizing sights any sport has to offer is that high majestic arch that is produced when a ball player hits a home run. It is a play that is matched by no other sport, and has had fans obsessing over it since the beginning of the game. Last year Major League Baseball hit an all time high grossing for the first time over 8 billion dollars in revenue. This is a severe increase from 1995 when revenues were only 1.5 billion, or 2.2 billion when adjusted for inflation . Most of this revenue comes form lucrative TV deals, but we have also seen a 5% increase in ticket sales since 2012. Although ticket sales has a linear increase with each year, I saw an extreme jump from 55,872,271 tickets sold in 1992 to 70,256,459 tickets sold in 1993, a 25.9% increase. Sure enough the home run totals were nearly 1,000 more in the year 1993 than in 1992.My hypothesis is that as the number of home runs annually increases so will the annual attendance. Ticket sales can be seen as the level of demand for a baseball game. I believe the excitement of a homerun is a crucial incentive that could impact fans decision of whether to go to a game or not.
Session Name:
Sports Economics
Start Date
10-4-2015 9:00 AM
End Date
10-4-2015 10:00 AM
Location
HSB 300
Do Home Runs Effect Attendance in Major League Baseball?
HSB 300
One of the most memorizing sights any sport has to offer is that high majestic arch that is produced when a ball player hits a home run. It is a play that is matched by no other sport, and has had fans obsessing over it since the beginning of the game. Last year Major League Baseball hit an all time high grossing for the first time over 8 billion dollars in revenue. This is a severe increase from 1995 when revenues were only 1.5 billion, or 2.2 billion when adjusted for inflation . Most of this revenue comes form lucrative TV deals, but we have also seen a 5% increase in ticket sales since 2012. Although ticket sales has a linear increase with each year, I saw an extreme jump from 55,872,271 tickets sold in 1992 to 70,256,459 tickets sold in 1993, a 25.9% increase. Sure enough the home run totals were nearly 1,000 more in the year 1993 than in 1992.My hypothesis is that as the number of home runs annually increases so will the annual attendance. Ticket sales can be seen as the level of demand for a baseball game. I believe the excitement of a homerun is a crucial incentive that could impact fans decision of whether to go to a game or not.