Given the number of trial balloons floated in the last few weeks -- one plan involving the 2020 season being conducted in Arizona only; another with teams using their spring training homes in both Florida and Arizona -- Major League Baseball seems resigned to the fact that the 2020 season, if it takes place at all, will be played without fans in attendance.
That's necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the need to keep both players and fans safe.
Such a concept would take some getting used to -- What is the sound of no hand clapping? -- but presumably, baseball in front of completely empty seats would be better than no baseball at all.
Eventually, however, MLB -- like its counterparts in the NFL, NHL, NBA, and MLS -- will have to figure out a way to play before paying customers. Modern professional sports derive much of their revenues from TV and ancillary media rights, but for economic and aesthetic reasons, eventually, sports will need to re-start with fans on hand.
And that's where things could get really tricky.
Put aside the not incidental matter of public safety for a moment -- How many fans will be allowed into ballparks, stadiums and arenas? Have we seen the last of the sellouts? -- and consider that professional sports needs paying customers to survive.
Fans provide the emotion, the backdrop, the soundtrack to pro sports. Is a one-run game in the ninth inning nearly as captivating without the anticipation swelling in the seats, the rhythmic clapping, the expectant murmur? Not hardly.
But on a more prosaic level, MLB needs the ticket-buying public to survive. Estimates have it that ticket-holders provide a little more than a third of the game's revenue. For an industry that netted $10.8 billion in 2019, that translates into approximately $4 billion from fans -- hardly chump change.
But in three months, six months, a year, will fans have the appetite to wedge themselves into seats at, say, Fenway Park, inches from strangers?
And even if fans can cast their fears aside -- perhaps thanks to a vaccine against the virus -- there's the matter of an economy, which could be in ruins. Already, there are forecasts of unemployment figures rivaling or exceeding those of the Great Depression.
If a quarter of Americans are out of work, who will have the means to purchase tickets?
"The vast majority of us will have fewer assets and less income and for a long period of time, we'll be dealing with the remnants of the newly-unemployed,'' says Smith College professor Andrew Zimbalist, a noted sports economist. ''Those people won't have the leisure income to spend at an arena or ballpark. So we can expect there will be lower attendance across the board, I believe.
"The other significant factor is that people are going to be reluctant to go to crowded events. Who knows? Maybe you could imagine the Red Sox having a policy, at least initially, that everybody has to sit one seat apart from the next person and also, there must be an empty row in between. And if that's true, one quarter of the capacity will be available. So instead of their being a potential of 38,000 (fans), you'll have something like a 9,500.
"So you have two factors at work here and both are very hard to quantify because nobody really knows the ultimate physical trajectory of this. There are just a lot of imponderables and uncertainties that make it very difficult. A lot of this is dependent on social discipline and we don't know if that's going to happen or not.''
Zimbalist also forecasts that, thanks to various government stimulus packages, "an enormous amount of price instability when this economy starts working again. We're not going to have the normal economy we had in October of 2019; it's going to be an economy that, yes, puts people back to work but in an environment that nobody's ever seen before. What's going to result is craziness and it's going to be very hard to control it. It will be economic chaos.''
In that environment, will paying for seats to go watch the Kansas City Royals come to Fenway be much of a priority?
With far less discretionary income available and people prioritizing other things well before leisure activities, could that force teams to roll back ticket prices? Not necessarily.
"I could imagine that,'' says Zimbalist with some caution. "Teams will try to respond to the market and the market is going to be a weak one. Either people won't have their jobs back, or they won't be making the same money they were before or their assets will have a lot less value than they had before. Hence, they're not going to have the resources to pay the prices they paid before. So yes, I can imagine teams scaling back. Markets will be different -- I think you'll see more of a scaleback in New York City than you will elsewhere.
"But keep in mind, you're going to see all this inflationary pressure coming about. Then I think you'll see all prices start to go up. I can't tell you whether a box seat at Fenway is going to go from $150 to $85, or 150% down to $115. I can't tell you that; John Henry and Tom Werner can't tell you that. They're going to respond to the market. What's going to happen, after the initial cutback, the inflationary forces throughout the economy will start lifting prices again -- not only for ticket prices, but for everything.''
Some other areas that could be impacted:
- Long-term free agent deals: "You just had the Yankees sign Gerrit Cole to a nine-year, $324-million contract, right?'' asks Zimbalist. "Well, that's premised on the economics of 2019 -- not the economics of 2020. So, how are the Steinbrenners going to generate the revenues that will enable him to pay that? In the short run, the salaries are pro-rated due to a stoppage in play due to a national emergency. They have some coverage there. But going forward, how are these owners going to be able to pay these players they've signed to multi-year contracts. It will be easier in the NHL and NBA because (as dictated in their collective bargaining agreements), the contracts are shorter. But just because it's easier doesn't make it easy.
- TV deals and rights fees: "Don't be surprised if you see some re-negotiation of the television packages, or if the new television packages are smaller than the existing ones. And also keep in mind, this was supposed to be the first year that baseball teams were going to be able to sell their own streaming rights. Before this year, they were done by the BAM (Baseball Advanced Media) office in New York. All of that revenue is dependent on your ability to sell each month -- either directly from the RSN (regional sports network) to the consumer or the RSN to the cable providers to the consumer. If the Red Sox aren't going to be able to charge $10 a month for their streaming product, that's another problem. And if you tune in and see that three-quarters of the seats at Fenway are empty, it's not going to be as enjoyable. It's just not as exciting.''
- Future labor agreements: "Both sides are going to be humbled by the fragility of their league. They're both going to realize that they're not indomitable. They can't do whatever they want. The economic conditions are weaker, there's a frailty that impacts us all and I suspect that, although there's going to be a lot of conflict, there will be a greater willingness to find common ground. Whatever you believe about the rhetoric of (MLBPA executive director) Tony Clark, I don't think he has the ability to get the players to (strike). That world stopped existing when Marvin Miller was the head of the Players Association. Last year, the average salary about $4.5 million - players are not willing, in the interest of making the CBA more favorable to them, to sit out and miss $4.5 million per year. They enjoy playing the game and not only are they getting an average of $4.5 million as salary, they're making their NIL (name, image and likeness) more valuable (for marketing purposes).''
- Corporate luxury boxes and ticket accounts: "There will be a hit to premium seating and catering revenue, though this will vary, obviously, from ballpark to ballpark and city to city. That's part of roughly 50 percent of all team revenue that comes from the ballpark.''
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