Could the Clippers Be on to Something? A Look into the Indians Dwindling Ticket Sales

During the Indians last home stand, they were embarrassed and I don’t mean by their 6-4 record against three AL Central rivals. The Indians were outdrawn by their AAA farm club on three consecutive dates as the Clippers stormed their way to the International League title.

A minor league club should never outdraw any Major League team, in fact, it should nearly be impossible as most stadiums hold 10,000 or less fans (Huntington Park holds 10,100 in Columbus) and the average MLB attendance is over 30,500 per game. Despite this, the Clippers pulled out all the stops for their three weekday play-off games, giving away free tickets and offering discounted food deals in an effort to sell out each game. That they did and then some. Below is a break down of last Monday through Wednesday’s attendance totals.

This is more than embarrassing, it is a serious problem. Sure there are jokes to be made about supporting a team that is actually in the play-offs and how the Indians roster is made up of mostly 2015 Clippers, but the fact remains that watching the Indians should be a much greater value than the Clippers. It shouldn’t matter if the tickets are free and the Indians average $50 per seat. The entire purpose of the Columbus Clippers as a team is to get players ready to play for the Indians.

This is really just a small sample of the greater problem for the Indians that has been going on for years. Currently, the Indians sit second to last in MLB attendance with just over 17,000 fans per game and as you can see by the chart above, those numbers have been even lower of late. From 2012 to today, the Indians have been second to last each season with the exception of 2013 when they surpassed the other Florida team, Miami, as well. Going back further, the Indians haven’t finished within the top twenty teams in attendance since 2002.

In addition to keeping at the bottom among Major League teams, the Indians overall attendance has dropped almost every single season since their play-off run in 2007. The chart below shows the average home attendance for each season since.

In 2007, the average MLB attendance was 32,784, so the numbers have fallen some all around the league, but they haven’t fallen by 11,000 fans per game (more like 2,000). The Indians problems weren’t fixed when they overspent in free agency prior to 2013, they weren’t fixed the next year after winning the Wild Card and they weren’t helped when they were picked by Sports Illustrated as the best team in baseball prior to this season. The numbers went down the year after they were a game from the World Series and have been dropping ever since with the only exception being 2011.

At this point, it is hard to blame the normal scape goats. It isn’t that the owners don’t spend money. The signings of Nick Swisher and Michael Bourn proved that. It isn’t that the team needs to win first. There was no bump after the successful seasons in 2007 and 2013. And it isn’t that baseball is losing in popularity to other sports. If the Clippers three consecutive sell-outs don’t show that enough, check the below chart of the success of all Ohio MLB affiliated baseball teams.

If baseball isn’t maintaining or even growing in popularity, explain how the AA Akron RubberDucks had a record setting season in attendance this year. The Captains and Scrappers both managed to average more than 3,000 fans per game for A level and below baseball in cities of less than 20,000 residents and the Dayton Dragons appear to be playing on a different planet. The most successful minor league franchise as far as attendance is concerned, the Reds A level club extended their sell out streak to 1,121 games, the longest in the history of American sports.

Baseball in Ohio is thriving and most of these teams are not currently in the midst of a play-off run. The Reds were the first team eliminated in the NL Central this year and still averaged 30,419 fans per game in a city smaller than Cleveland. If being outdrawn by the Clippers isn’t an embarrassment, then that has to be. No amount of seat reduction or bar creation is going to make up that difference.

The only obvious aspect left to explain the attendance drop is financial. We looked at the Indians ticket prices compared to the economy of the city of Cleveland last season and the results showed the tickets are fairly priced compared to the rest of baseball, but maybe that isn’t good enough. This is not to say that the Indians should take an idea away from the Clippers and give away the seats for free, but there are other options including one that has been tried before.

Back in 2005 (when the Indians average attendance was a lofty 24,861, good for 24th in baseball), there were discussions just like this one. One such discussion occurred on the Mike Trivisonno show and somehow it lead into the Indians allowing Triv to sell every seat in the stadium for $5. First come first served, any fans that wanted to see the Indians play the Twins on September 11th, 2005 could do so for less than the price of a bleacher seat. I remember this particularly well because I went to the game and had a pair of nice seats down the third base line for $10.

The reasoning for the takeover was that Trivisonno didn’t want the Indians to be embarrassed on national TV when they were shown on ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball. How bad would it look if only the 28,441 that had shown up per game for the previous home stand left the stadium nearly half empty? If only he knew how much the Indians would wish for those days a decade later.

The tickets were sold only for three hours on September 7th, but because of this event, we have a small glimpse of what extreme ticket depreciation could look like. For the three games in the home stand before the 11th, the Indians averaged 26,188 per game. For the Sunday night game, they got a near sell out at 38,564, although it was only the 8th most attended game of the season. In addition to the $5 deal, the Indians were in the midst of a play-off race and the Sunday game would be the last game of a seven game winning streak.

That streak was part of a larger 17-2 run and yet, after that run the Indians had three consecutive games in Cleveland against Tampa Bay where they averaged less than 25,000 per game, so there is further proof that winning alone does not drive fans. They did show up to see the Indians choke away the season to Chicago as the White Sox swept the Tribe in front of three sell out crowds.

By dropping the average ticket price by about 75%, the Indians were able to increase ticket sales by about 50% over the previous week. In my research of attendance over the past nine season, I’ve found that just being Saturday increases attendance by 22% and the day before featured a crowd of 32,123, so that is pretty accurate considering the average per game showing in 2005. The average Sunday game is only about 3% higher than average game overall, so the increase in ticket sales was significant, but not as impressive as it could have been possibly if it were advertised better or was attempted over a longer period.

Back to the present day, free or even $5 tickets may seem extreme, but it would seem that the Indians need a little bit more extreme in their business model. While ticket sales make up the bulk of a team’s in stadium income, there is also a considerable amount of funding that comes from concessions and merchandise sales. Thanks to their IPO in 1998, the Indians are the only team to open their books to the public even for a short period so we know that at least then those two factors made up 35% of all in stadium sales (this from one of the greatest baseball books ever written, Baseball Between the Numbers) for the 1997.

While Major League Baseball does hold teams above a certain price for tickets, the Indians would be better served to do anything they can to get more fans into the stands simply to increase their concession and merchandise sales. Outside of this, there is the simple economic math (too simply for reality) that would likely show that lowered ticket prices that increased attendance by enough would also raise total income from attendance. For example, if the average ticket price right now is $30 (sources vary on the actual amount) and that is low enough to entice 17,877 fans per game, they would gross 43,441,000 across an entire season (they claimed $49M from ticket sales in 1997). The below chart shows how many fans they would need to attend per game to hit the $45M mark if the average ticket value were between $20-$28.

Given that a 75% decrease in price lead to just a 50% increase in ticket sales, it is extremely hard to believe that a 33% reduction in price (the $20 level) would equate to a 50% increase in attendance (about 27,000) over an entire season, but with the right marketing it could. Even if bringing in extra fans at a lower price didn’t increase total gross from ticket sales, it would possibly increase merchandise and concessions enough to make up the difference.

There are a lot of factors that go into the economics of ticket sales and most are completely unknown to those outside of the front office. In spite of this, more information is available all the time and we are getting a clearer picture of the Indians fan side of the situation at least. Winning doesn’t improve ticket sales. Play-off appearances don’t improve ticket sales. Signing multiple big name free agents doesn’t improve ticket sales. The one thing that could work and the Indians have yet to try is lowering ticket prices. Either that or they could move the franchise to Columbus, rename them the Buckeyes and they might trick enough people into turning a profit.