Winning baseball = more fans
It’s so simple. John Sherman and the gang need to remember that opening the pocket book can also bring in more money, but it is more important than just money.
The last series against Texas did something that the Royals have been seemingly unable to do in recent years, draw over 70,000 people to Kauffman for a weekend series. This team is much more exciting than any recent iteration and it is already starting to bring people out to the ballpark.
A Texas Rangers series at the beginning of May is not the sort of set up for having most fans at a series in years, but that is exactly what happened. Friday night there were 25,690 in attendance at the Royals game. Saturday another 26,002 showed up. Finally, there were 20,613 on Sunday. That is just over 72,000 people in three nights. Not an amazing total compared to 2015 when a weekend series against the Rangers had over 100,000 fans in the stands, but compared to recent years it was a large number.
In 2023, for comparison, the average weekend series brought in 58,085 fans. There is the one weird one where St. Louis was in town Friday and Saturday before an off Sunday, which is not a thing that normally happens. That series brought in 63,287 in just two games, so the Cards could outdraw (unsurprisingly) this most recent series if there were a third game. The most attended series last year was the opening weekend series that came a few hundred short of 70k. This year’s opening weekend just barely crested 70.
Maybe this is too many words and numbers, but I want you to understand that the number of people who decided to take their time and money this weekend and head out to The K was unusual. I think it is a sign that people are starting to believe in this team. I want ownership to see that they will be rewarded for putting a good product on the field, even if it is merely a competitive team rather than a World Series contender. May is a hard time to put butts in seats. Kids are still in school and summer has not quite fully arrived, from a weather perspective. And yet, ten- to fifteen-thousand extra people showed up to watch this Royals team.
The momentum did not carry into Monday and Tuesday because they were school nights. It is also too early to project out how many more fans could come this year with any level of accuracy, but the possibility should make ownership happy. According to Spotrac, the payroll is about $20 million more than last season, though that could change come the trade deadline. That is not a huge jump in player spending, but now they are seeing 3,000+ more fans per game over the weekend before summer sets in. If you average that many more fans per game over the last 60 home games, now we are talking about nearly 200,000 extra tickets sold plus parking, concessions, and Royals gear. I do not know what each fan is worth to the Royals, but I guarantee they know that number down to the last penny. What that sort of analysis misses is the longer-term implications.
For a company, bringing in more money this year is obviously good. Often that tends to push businesses to be myopic, maximizing short-term returns over the harder-to-measure long-term. Bonuses are also usually tied to the more immediate time frame. I really want the Royals, as they look for hundreds of millions in public funding for a new stadium, to remember that they are in a longer-range fight. There is a war going on for eyeballs, and many traditional viewing experiences are losing. Video games and movies are having some struggles, and we have seen massive layoffs due to this. Paramount is looking for someone to buy them after having problems. And so on, and so on, and so on. My son loves baseball, but it is way easier to get him to sit and watch YouTube. He also gets frustrated that none of his friends are interested in baseball and a lot of them call it boring.
Teams need to see increases in attendance as a much bigger opportunity than I think they do currently. For the sport to remain healthy and financially viable, they need to start maximizing attendance and viewership numbers over this year's profit. Having a better Royals team will get more people to the stadium. We already saw that start his weekend. I just hope they realize that more engagement is more than just more money in the immediate term.