Attendance and Payroll
Chuck Armstrong spoke with Geoff Baker yesterday, offering his thoughts on the M’s turnaround, the critics of the prior administration (including us, I’m sure), and how the team is going to go forward. Included in the article is this brief mention of attendance and payroll.
Armstrong said the team won’t know its 2010 payroll until mid-October. The team had budgeted for 2 million fans, and while it should exceed that by about 200,000, Armstrong says prices of tickets being bought are lower.
“People used to come to the ballpark and say ‘Give me the best available ticket,’ ” he said. “Now they say ‘Give me the cheapest available ticket.’ “
The M’s attendance has only dropped off about 4.5% from last year, which is pretty remarkable given the circumstances. Attendance in MLB as a whole is down 6.5%, and the Mariners were coming off the kind of season that chases away season ticket holders en masse. The San Diego Padres, for instance, went from 2.4 million to 1.9 million fans this year, as 500,000 people decided not to come see a team that finished 63-99 last year.
The combination of a good season from the team this year, good will generated from the new front office, and the return of some guy named Griffey has helped hold off a significant part of a potential slide in attendance. Armstrong includes discounting as part of that as well, as the average revenue per ticket being generated is apparently lower now than it used to be (he offers no proof of this, of course, but it’s believable enough to be taken at face value).
So, what impact should all this have on the payroll?
It should go up, even if not a lot. The Mariners gave Zduriencik a budget that was around $20 million lower than the 2007 team, in large part because of their projected attendance losses and uncertainty surrounding the economy. Jack Z did them one better than that, as the team’s total player expenditures are going to come out close to $25 million lower the prior year, thanks to the mid-season trade of Jarrod Washburn and the team’s insistence on having the Pirates and Brewers pay the remaining 2009 salaries of Jack Wilson, Ian Snell, and Bill Hall.
So, despite a rebuilding year and a drop in attendance, the M’s didn’t take a big financial hit this year. And, given the winning season that the M’s have just guaranteed plus some signs that the economy is recovering, the M’s projected attendance and revenue for 2010 has to be higher than it was for 2009. With higher projected revenues should come a larger budget.
So, Mr. Armstrong, please give the front office some additional financial flexibility. We know these guys aren’t wasteful with your cash the way the previous regime was, and that you can expect that a solid ROI on money invested in the on field personnel. Bump the payroll back up over $100 million. Give Jack and his ability to spend some money this winter, and see what kind of revenues pour in when they put the franchise back in playoff contention.
oh nice.
let’s see, we sold more tickets than we estimated, how can we spin this to still look poor? …
…
…
that’s it! all the tickets bought were the upper deck and center field family section tickets. the cheap ones, so we still came out in the red.
I don’t enjoy being cynical about admin. but they’ve made it so easy, it’s becoming second nature.
I guarantee that the fanbase trusts Zduriencik, show us that you do too!
It seems like success next season hinges on our payroll. If it doesn’t increase, we will be hard-pressed to eek out more than a .500 record again. If we go back over $100 million, we are instantly in contention.
It will be hard to predict which teams will be able to have more success next season given the current nature of the economy. I guess we’ll see which owners are willing to pay more out of their own pocket by seeing how risky they are on increasing payroll for 2010.
I hope your post reaches some FO ears, we could be on the verge of the playoffs with some increased payroll.
They spent about $95 million this year. The extra $5 million isn’t the difference between .500 and contender. We’re looking at them raising payroll enough to buy another win or two.
Let’s not overstate the importance of this.
I’m as interested or more interested to see what’ll be done to improve the farm system. As much as getting back to the playoffs in 2010 would be wonderful, seeing year-in-year-out contention is better.
I have been amazed by the number of positive things Jack Z has pulled off during the season. His flexibility financially was close to zero.
While it will not be great during the off season, it will be better than it was with Batista, Bedard and Washburn on the payroll. It will be interesting to see what Jack is able to do.
Improving the team’s win total by another 10 games next season will be difficult, but I am amazed by what has been accomplished this year, so who knows.
I was thinking about this recently.
Even if the Mariners just maintain the present payroll they should have ~20M to spend (barring Jack Wilson’s option being picked up–Doubtful.)
Looking at the available free-agent talent however, I have a hard time finding individuals who would be worth breaking the bank for.
Certainly this team desperately needs offensive options at 1B, DH and 3B, but given the abundance of free agent DH-types, along with the recent correction in how that type of player is being valued, the Mariners aren’t going to have to spend much to fill the first two positions I mentioned.
Add to this the fact that the free agent class for third basemen is really thin after Beltre, and it becomes pretty easy to see why a GM wouldn’t want to spend a whole lot in free-agency this year.
Basically what I’m trying to scratch at is that while payroll flexibility is always an advantage, the lackluster talent of this free-agent class makes leveraging that advantage much more difficult.
Not really. It just means you spend money in trades instead.
Don’t want to pay big money to any of the 1B/DH types that are free agents? Then you try to trade for Prince Fielder.
Financial flexibility will always have significant value. There are always high priced, high value players that can be obtained with the right offer.
It will be interesting to see what Zduriencik does about filling the projected third base hole. The only third baseman worth spending alot of money on, other than Beltre, is Figgins. But, he’s going to be terribly over priced. He’s coming off the best year of his career in a thin market. Some team is going to give this 32 year old speedster a contract several years and a boatload of money. I don’t think such a contract would be wise. But, Lackey is also a free agent. He’ll demand a mint as well and the M’s would be bidding against at least Anaheim and Boston, but with a bit more payroll flexiblity, maybe it could happen?
I’m looking forward to seeing if he pulls off another Putz like three team trade. The fact that he looks at improving the whole roster, instead of having tunnel vision, makes any series of trades pretty exciting.
With the way he builds a roster, and the quotes above suggesting there won’t be a huge drop off in payroll, I’m not worried about our GM and making the team better.
Having been through a few bad economies, I am no stranger to the phrase: “there are signs that the economy is recovering.”
Let’s hope so…
If the M’s keep the payroll budget the same, but other teams reduce theirs and the market for FAs is low – it could be the same as a budget increase.
I think this team understands the value of win$. Z will have flexibility.
It is still too early to forecast an economic recovery. A double dip recession isn’t out of the question. Take a look at the jobs report for tody. It would not be prudent to plan for increased revenue in 2010.
Many season ticket holders near our seats are tlking about not renewing or finding partners. From time to time, I buy tickets on StuHub in the higher priced ticket areas. This year I have seen a lot of discounts.
I hope I am wrong but more belt tightening may be in store for the Mariners and everyone else.
The M’s attendance has only dropped off about 4.5% from last year, which is pretty remarkable given the circumstances.
Dave, where did you get those statistics? I have the Mariners dropping off over 6% from last year.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/current_attendance.shtml
I agree, but my point was that this free-agent class makes it more difficult to leverage your available cash.
Trades are more difficult then signing a free-agent. You have to find a willing partner and unless it’s a complete payroll deal you’re going to have to expend organizational talent.
Prince Fielder is definitely worth spending cash on, but you probably also have to expend a considerable amount of young cheap talent.
As for third base, if Beltre is truly not interested in returning (The tea leaves don’t seem to be promising…) I wouldn’t mind if the M’s tried to sign Miguel Tejada to a mid-term deal and moved him over.
He’s not been a good defensive shortstop for a while but I don’t think he’d be bad at third, and his ability to get on base and hit for respectable power might make him worth 10M or so for a couple of years.
I’m not surprised that the prices of the tickets bought are lower. Every game I’ve been to this year the Club seats were a vast wasteland. Once you get past each bag there were very few fans and I’m guessing less fans paying $7.75 for a beer.
I went to a couple of the 2-for-1 games this year and both times the upper deck had a decent amount of fans while the Club seats and the Field seats were very spotty. Not really surprising in this economy – people are looking for value.
Dave, where did you get those statistics? I have the Mariners dropping off over 6% from last year.
They have three home games remaining.
I think the numbers are better than what you report, Dave.
Mariners have had 96.3% of their home games this season, which means that assuming the average will hold up over the last few games expected yearly attendance should be 1.0385x their current number, or 2,192,175.
Last year’s attendance was 2,253,490, and 2,192,175 would represent a 2.7% drop from that figure.
The BR attendance link reflects 78 games home games of both years,
Sorry, but no. That’s a number through 78 games last year as well. The full season 2008 attendance was 2,329,702. The decline is in fact 6%.
Why so they do! Whoopsies
It’s still impressive to decline by less than the league average coming off a 100-loss season, so the general point stands.
I looked at the historical attendance trends before the start of the season (I wish you could link to individual comments directly, but scroll down to the highlighted text), and concluded that if everything went well the team would be lucky to stay above 2M — and if they did, it “would be a heck of an achievement.” I still feel that way. And I’m willing to concede the Griffey effect might have been more powerful than I credited back then, but I also think the many months of seeming contention and the excitement generated by some of the new faces (Gutierrez) plus the general positive buzz about the direction of the team under Zduriencik both here and in more mainstream outlets like Brock and Salk, had even more to do with it.
However you want to apportion credit, it’s a very positive result even if the average ticket price is down (and I’m willing to bet the average concession sales per paid seat is down as well). It should signal to ownership that there’s a strong base of fans who are willing to keep coming out to games as long as there’s something on the field worth seeing. It may not be enough, though; or at least not enough to enable the financial freedom we’d like to see them give Zduriencik. If they are finishing at 2.2M that’s still down a bit from 2008, and that shift towards cheaper seats (and lower concession sales) means revenue is down more than that overall. (And it’s more than just people fleeing the boxes for the bleachers — I don’t know if WaMu, for example, ever rented suites at Safeco but somebody did, and that kind of corporate luxury is in abeyance at least for now. I’ve scanned the suites at each game I’ve attended this year — I take binoculars — and I’ve never seen more than a couple of suites occupied.)
The M’s are kind of an awkward “tween” team — enough revenue of their own to avoid being an MLB welfare case like Florida, but not enough to get into bidding wars with the big boys. Fortunately on the field at least they just have to beat the AL West, and not the East or the rest of baseball. The A’s don’t have a new stadium to look forward to and are deep in rebuilding, though that alwasy seems to take Beane less time than it should; the Rangers finally seem to have found some pitching, only to have their owner hit a financial skidpatch. Alas, that still leaves the Angels, who have an aggressive, financially sound owner, a strong team, and the bump of yet another postseason.
Even with slightly looser purse strings, Zduriencik has a tough, tough job ahead of him. But… in Jack We Trust.
Of course, half a percent in attendance are about 10,000 fans, so the difference between a 4.5% drop and a 6% drop are about 10,000 fans per game. An average of 25,000 per game (apparently, that is what they averaged in the last three games last year) for the last three games would get them to -6% and an average of 35,000 would get them to -4.5%.
Given the improved performance of the team and the possibility of Griffey playing his last games, 35,000 per game is not out of the question, so let’s just say that we won’t know whether they lost 4.5% or 6% until Sunday.
Poor Detroit. Win your division (in a tight race no less) and get KILLED in attendance. -620,459, nearly as bad as the Mets. Guess that auto bailout didn’t include the Tigers.
If Zduriencik has a little more financial latitude, what should he spend it on?
How about a long-term contract for Felix? Even with the inconsistent nature of pitchers, the risk of injury, and the once-every-five-days maximum return, that still seems like a better use of money than getting into a bidding war in the open market for a free agent. Buying out his arbitration years and then a couple beyond, or even more — even 6 years just takes him to 29, and another big payday elsewhere — would help establish the kind of core that a winning team is built around. And other players like to sign with teams that they view are contending (or close to doing so).
Seems like that’s priority number one, because if you can’t come to some agreement with Felix you have to look at trading him this winter when you’ll get the most for him you possibly could. And once you’ve done that, well, things have changed so much that we can’t even predict where the holes will be (other than ace starter) much less how to spend money (or prospects) to fill them.
Here you go joser:
Joser’s historical attendance trends comment
Check out the cover story in the current SI. Detroit is so destitute that the Tigers are the only the only thing holding them together emotionally. Hard not to root for them.
I agree 100%. Other than a low end, on-his-last-legs DH gamble like Matsui, we should just stay away from the free agent market and spend on keeping what we’ve got. And for me, that includes Jack Wilson. (I’m assuming Beltre is not interested).
I also agree with Dave that the better option is using some payroll to help swing a trade. (Can’t wait for the inevitable post here on what our best bets are to fill DH/3B/1B on the trade market).
So if it has to be Tui/Hannahan at third and (I hope) Saunders in left all next year, I say let ’em play.
Re the Tigers, yes, it’s worth rooting for them. A World Series win would be a great feelgood story in a terrible year. They had a bank close in suburban Detroit today, and I suspect that’s just the leading edge of the wedge.
As for the M’s, tonight is Fan Appreciation Night and Sunday is Kids Appreciation Night and possibly Griffey’s last game, but when I went online to look for tickets for Saturday’s game, let’s just say there was a nice selection.
I’m frankly amazed at Z. this year, who’s gotten wins where I didn’t believe any wins even were. The trouble has been that this has seemed like a sort of Fabian strategy – it has allowed the team to compete (and could continue to do so, more-or-less indefinitely) and get over .500, but without any real hope of getting into the playoffs under its own power.
Given his obvious knowledge and ability, I am very hopeful that he can also, given something near what the Angels spend, manage the additional trick of assembling a title winner. Maybe next year.
Sunday will be a very special day for me.
I went to my first M’s game when I was 33 days old. My dad took me, and I have a picture of myself, my dad, and Reggie Walton (look that one up), along with the ticket stub. It is one of my most beloved possessions.
My son will be 59 days old on Sunday, and it will be his first M’s game. And my dad is coming, too. And I will get to go see the greatest player to wear ANY Seattle uniform play with my dad and my son. I’m so excited.
Given the improved performance of the team and the possibility of Griffey playing his last games, 35,000 per game is not out of the question, so let’s just say that we won’t know whether they lost 4.5% or 6% until Sunday.
I believe you and I am talking about two different things. Dave said the M’s attendance has only dropped off about 4.5% from last year, not that it might end up only dropping off 4.5%.
Totally agreed. I’ve been in Seattle since ’98, but am originally from MI…the state has been sinking for so long, it seems like the only thing to look forward to as any kind of emotional boost these days is when the Tigers, Red Wings, Pistons, or one of the college football teams is playing a championship season.
If, for no other reason than that alone, please Zack Greinke kick Minnesota’s arse tomorrow night and help out the Tigers…thank you!
I’m a Michigander too, and while I think any championship would raise spirits, the feelgood would be topical at best. Hoot and holler, chug an 18 pack of nappy ice and wake up the next day with a hangover… but it doesn’t matter because you’re still unemployed.
On topic, I hope the M’s front office uses their newfound and projected financial freedom to truly lock up Felix.
I would be down for bringing Junior back as well, because even though he kills your bench flexibility, he adds net value all over the franchise. Value that leads to (hopefully) more financial freedom. ‘Griffey and the Mariners’ is the easiest decision from a marketing standpoint that has ever existed. And he can still hit a little.
After the icons are in, you can maximize your talent level with trades or free agency or whatever. I just think that fans have an innate desire to have the same heroes year after year. If they can still play an effective part (either with a dominating arsenal or a charismatic smile), they have value.
Wow, that’s very cool. I wish it was within my power to arrange to have Griffey come over and get a picture holding your son with you and your dad…. well, maybe I can try for Reggie Walton.
Have a good game, and a great memory!
As much as I was against Griffey coming back before last season, I’d be okay with him returning in ’10 if they kept the bullpen to six guys, so there was one more bench position available. And if one of those bench positions wasn’t occupied by Sweeney (or someone else equally useless, his recent “hot streak” included). This team can’t really afford to have any feel-good veterans who aren’t pulling their weight, but if there’s going to be a sentimental pick it has to be Griffey. There can only be one 25th man / designated tickler.
Gawd that Armstrong is such an IDIOT!
He’s supposed to jump up on his soap box and scream out. “Hey everybody, Seattle is loaded. So Nero, Boras & all you other blood suckers line up with your wheel barrows because I’m one fat muther with a big fat checkbook!”
Trade for Halladay!