I thought only the AL counted tickets sold, whereas the NL actually counted asses in seats.

Maybe that all changed in 1992 around the time when they combined the baseballs, and combined the umps????

I'll bite: why wouldn't it be interesting to note an extreme discrepancy between tickets sold and people there? The Rangers announce 30-35,000 tickets sold, and generally I look around the Ballpark and there seem to be that many people there. If some other team announces 12,000, or 20,000, or 35,000 and you can patently see that there's a fifth or a tenth that many, isn't that worth commenting and musing on? I mean, why did Nameless Team sell so many more tickets than they attracted people to their game?

It's still snark-worthy. If the Cubs "sell" their tickets to their scalping outfit, it doesn't matter to the rest of us that that entity couldn't unload them. Asses in seats is what matters to the rest of us.

Here you go

BDC, I agree with your point that unused tickets are relevant to gauging interest in a team, but Berg's point is about the attitude of the people who point it out to suggest that the team is choosing sold over attendance in an attempt to deceive fans.

This piece seems to be attacking a strawman. I'm sure some people do exactly what he's saying but the only quote he gives is from a 2005 article by Bill Shaikin. It feels very out of the blue. I don't particularly care one way or the other what they are using for "attendance" but I suspect the people that it matters too (team accountants, other teams for revenue sharing) the paid number is a hell of a lot more important than asses in the seats.

Maybe that all changed in 1992 around the time when they combined the baseballs, and combined the umps????

Didn't the umps combine after the '99 umpire strike?

I caught the replay of the Miami game from yesterday today. The paid attendance was announced as 25,723 but it looked like 12 people showed up for the game. The standard camera angle of behind the pitcher had only two fans onscreen behind home plate for at least the first inning of the game.

BDC, I agree with your point that unused tickets are relevant to gauging interest in a team, but Berg's point is about the attitude of the people who point it out to suggest that the team is choosing sold over attendance in an attempt to deceive fans.

Well, they are, right? They're announcing an "attendance" that includes thousands of people that didn't attend.

They're just joined in the charade by every other team.

"Attendance" as a descriptor of fan interest or consumption is sort of peculiar to sports anyway. You hardly hear about "attendance" for a concert (other than venue capacity) or for a movie in wide release. Those things are gauged in terms of revenue. "Attendance" is a synonym of "turnout," but sports parlance has expanded the definition of the former by adding mushy words like "announced" or whatever. However, if you take MLB officials at face value, "deceiving the fans" is not why MLB uses tickets sold as the measurement. The blog post quotes the 2005 article, which in turn quotes Rich Levin as saying, "It’s because of revenue sharing,” Levin said. “That’s what we use in our official count."

But I don't see what the big deal is whether snarking on a big "attendance" discrepancy. As noted above, even MLB acknowledges its attendance figures are a fiction (as to attendance, not as to tickets sold).

#1 The AL changed to tickets sold in 1973. You heard a lot of , "See how much the fans are behind the DH. Attendance was up 17%!" (Yes. I'm saying it was intentional -- a ploy to try to sell the DH)

Yeah. They played a full season in 1973 as opposed to losing a few games in 1972. It was still up 12% on a per game basis.

No official reason as to why the NL changed in 1992. Maybe they just got tired of attendance articles that didn't adjust.

There's an awful lot of sense in tracking tickets sold though. A team has limited reasons to care what you do after buying the ticket. Sure, no parking or concession money if you don't show, but they can't be sure of that money in any case.

EDIT: There's a study in Baseball and Billions on the impact of switching from tickets used to tickets sold. Can't find my copy, but as I recall it, that 12% leap in 1973 is about what should have been expected.

The Maury Brown article is linked and goes into it. "Paid attendance" is what the teams care about because that is the money they take in and is(was?) the basis for revenue sharing. It is not deceitful as the teams are open about it.

dear ted berg,

we are all not STUPID thank you very much. we KNOW that "attendence" means numbers of tickets sold.

however, us baseball fans are using our eyeballs to see that a very large percent of people/corporations who bought tickets are not bothering to go to the actual GAME.

you can't judge "interest" in a ballclub by tickets sold, seeing as how they are a tax deduction so saying that "attendence" is up is just a lot of corporate speak which ignores the fact that the audience is not necessarily related to the numbers of tickets sold.

you can't judge "interest" in a ballclub by tickets sold, seeing as how they are a tax deduction so saying that "attendence" is up is just a lot of corporate speak which ignores the fact that the audience is not necessarily related to the numbers of tickets sold.

So everybody else gets to pay for these tickets, which are then not used. God Bless America.

No official reason as to why the NL changed in 1992.

It's in TFA. Basically, this is the MLB standard and is used for revenue sharing purposes, blah blah blah.

Hasn't the tax deduction on sports and entertainment in general been cut to like 50% or lower?

For tickets, yes (50%). Food/beverage is still fully deductible.

It's actually kind of interesting to think about why there would be massive discrepancies between tickets sold and people there. Aside from obvious and unpredictable factors, mainly weather-related. If a team (to take McCoy's example in #7) sells 25,000 tickets and 12 people actually use them (accounting for hypobole), then why? Are these season tickets written off by companies and firms (if not to taxes, then just to general goodwill expenditures)? Did the team "sell" thousands to tickets to local institutions at such a low price that people didn't see any value in using them? Were some picked up by speculators hoping for resales that never happened? At some point, it would seem that a ticket was either bought for too little or too much to be used. If I deliberately pay $20 for a decent ticket, I'm likely to use it. But if I pay 50¢ because it's my organization's Spirit Night, then I may just blow it off. Similarly if somebody's brother-in-law gives me the $100 seats because whatever: money means nothing to him and the tickets nothing to me.

("I" here is some hypothetical person. Can't remember the last time that I, BDC, failed to use a baseball ticket :)

I would think it has to do with season tickets and corporations buying those tickets up. Microsoft or SunTrust or whomever isn't buying the tickets to see every game but to have those seats for the games they want to go to. I'm sure with this being their first year in a new park and all that they'll have sold a ton of season tickets. I'm also sure that unless they stay good we'll see their paid attendance decline significantly in the next handful of years.

I would think that a large delta between tickets sold and people in seats would be a pretty good indicator that your tickets sold number is likely heading down.

So everybody else gets to pay for these tickets, which are then not used. God Bless America.

The seller (team or owners) pay taxes on the income, so it makes sense that the expense to the buyer would be tax deductible. With the 50% limit, it actually means that half the ticket price is being taxed twice. God Bless America indeed.

Perhaps for his next article Mr Berg will note that MLB keeps an official total of the number of hits and errors for each team in each and every game; and, therefore, there is no need for anyone to write and record that they saw a play recorded as a hit that should have been an error; or vice-versa; because all that matters in the world is what MLB officially records as what happened, and not what you poor peon think that you witnessed with your own eyes.

DB

Perhaps for his next article Mr Berg will note that MLB keeps an official total of the number of hits and errors for each team in each and every game;

Will this suffice?

The seller (team or owners) pay taxes on the income, so it makes sense that the expense to the buyer would be tax deductible.

If the tickets are being used for a business purpose. In small businesses, company season tickets can be used as a way to write off what would otherwise be a personal expense. In larger, public businesses, there is a question of proper use of company assets.

#14 That's now. Those reasons didn't apply in 1992. Remember that revenue sharing was initially based strictly on payroll. Come to that, revenue sharing wasn't in place in 1992.

Fair enough, Ron J. That's a good point!

With the 50% limit, it actually means that half the ticket price is being taxed twice.

Most every dollar gets taxed every time it changes hands. People who can't write off their tickets as a business expense have almost always paid taxes on the money they used to buy those tickets. So 100% of the ticket price is being taxed twice in those cases.

Not in business to business transactions. In very basic terms, one side takes a credit and the other takes a debit, which offset when the sides calculate profits for tax purposes. Individuals do not have P/L for tax purposes.

So if a company pays for tickets, that is an expense that cannot be fully recognized for tax purposes when most every other expense of the company is recognized.