Hey, Baseball’s Back! Anyone Seen The Fans?

Attendance is down 25 percent and national television ratings have slipped even more. One year after the work stoppage that was supposed to make baseball more profitable, the major-league teams probably will lose at least $300 million.

Maybe both sides in baseball’s worst labor dispute underestimated how much fans would turn away.

“We’ve got a long way to come back,” acting commissioner Bud Selig says. “But it’s too early to make any snap judgments.”

One month into the season, the 232-day strike appears to have caused vast after-effects, far more than baseball’s seven previous work stoppages:

Through Tuesday, the average attendance was 23,454, down 25.8 percent from last year’s average of 31,611. When compared to a similar point last season, the average was down 20.3 percent. Team executives say group sales, which usually take place during the off-season, were hurt most by the strike.

ESPN’s first 14 games had a 1.5 cable rating, down 32 percent from the 2.2 rating for the first 14 games last year. This year’s games were viewed by an average of 981,000 homes, down 29 percent from the average of 1,379,000 through 14 broadcasts last year.

Polling done for owners by Penn & Schoen Associates showed that among fans who attended at least one game in 1994, 39 percent were not very likely or not at all likely to attend a game this year.

Owners say revenue may drop to about $1.4 billion this year, down from from $1.88 billion in 1993. Because team payrolls declined by less than 5 percent following the strike, expenses won’t change that much. Teams spent $1.83 billion in 1993, and that figure probably will decline only by about $100 million because of missed salary during the first month of the season.

The average salary, which has declined only once since 1967, figures to drop slightly this year, from $1,168,263 to about $1,115,000.

The Fox Network says it won’t even consider bidding for TV rights until there’s a new collective bargaining agreement.

“They’re a lot of things we have to do,” Selig says. “There’s going to have to be a lot of marketing, local and national, a lot of reaching out. It’s going to have to become a permanent part of our existence.”

Owners, led by Selig, tried hard not to criticize players during the labor negotiations. But by claiming baseball had financial problems the union refused to address, the teams wound up convincing many fans that players were to blame.

Attendance is down for 25 of the 28 teams. Polling and focus groups conducted by Penn & Schoen on May 8 show the anger level of fans remains high.

”(It) is accentuated by the fact that fans understand that the strike was never truly settled,” Douglas Schoen wrote to owners in a May 9 memorandum that was obtained by The Associated Press. “Fans carry with them a strong sense that the strike was pointless and … nothing was accomplished.”

The men behind the owners’ new advertising campaign, “Welcome to The Show,” addressed fan anger by starting the campaign with commericials that avoided the use of players.

In addressing the clubs during a teleconference in late April, Jon Steel of Goodby Silverstein and Partners said his agency wanted to “avoid red herrings only likely to fuel fans’ anger.”

“That anger is being fueled by the media,” Steel said during the meeting, a videotape of which was obtained by The AP. “A lot of them are waiting for you to screw up. They’re looking for new reasons to be mad, more excuses to write negative articles.”

Steel, the agency’s director of planning, said broadcasting ads of stars such as Ken Griffey Jr. and Matt Williams would only remind fans of the record chases that didn’t happen last year. Later this season, the agency is planning to use ads including 1995’s stars.

Initial spots focused on an organist, a person mowing the outfield grass and Bill Lee talking about pitching.

“I still think the first thing in the marketing issue to get a long-term agreement between the parties,” Colorado Rockies chairman Jerry McMorris says.