Baseball: Lots of empty seats

[UNTFan23]

How can MLB survive with so many seats being empty in so many stadiums? While watching ESPN SC tonight, I saw many good seats that were empty (staduim upper decks looked like our endzone seats as well)...How can these teams afford to contract players for so much?

Of course the best way for baseball to die is for the players to strike (again) complaining that they don't get paid enough $$$. <_<

[IronMan4]

Before someone blames the players for attendance, let's use common sense. In all of our jobs, we will earn as much as we can. That's what we need to do, and I don't blame players for making millions. But remember: you are only worth what someone will pay you, and the players don't pay themselves. The ticket prices and player salaries are unrelated...why would an owner, a businessman pay so much to players that he has to raise ticket prices so much nobody can go? They don't. No, Joe Schmo may not be able to take his family to the game and buy them all a hot dog and himself a few beers more than once a year, but if that was detrimental to the owners making money, obviously they would not do it. They don't care about the average fan, they care about corporate sponsors, season tickets, and luxury suites. Companies and rich people snatching these up allow owners to pay the player ridiculous salaries, and they could care less if the 5 dollar seats are half full on a Tuesday night. Most of those "good seats" you see have already been paid for, usually by a company or individual with season tickets and didn't send anyone that night.

The reason baseball is losing popularity is because it is becoming outdated. Fast paced action and hard hitting of football and basketball rule the sports scene right now and not many of the precious young male demographic want to go to 6-7 baseball games a year and watch the "boring" pitching changes and holding the runner at first.

The other reason you see empty seats are at cities where the owner is not committed to winning. Tampa Bay, Detroit, San Diego, Montreal (though they are doing good so far this year), have not made a comittment to winning and the fan base has responded accordingly. This is why I am not opposed to contraction.

I guess it's easy to blame the players for all the problems because we see thier faces every time we turn on the TV, but the owners repeatedly paint themselves into a corner and then point the finger at someone else.

Baseball needs to market its stars, and make them into supertars, like NFL and NBA players are, the league needs to cut the crap and get rid of teams that have no intention of ever competing, and install some sort of a salary cap to keep owners from going completely nuts with the salaries and ruining the game beyond repair.

Compared to baseball though, hockey is up sh!t creek. There could be a year or two without any hockey games soon with the agreement running out, talk about salaries out of whack...

[The AFLAC Duck]

seats are too high, at least for the Rangers. This isn't an attempt to take a crack at the Rangers or talk about how i like the Astros, but a good example is the difference of seating prices. A good 15 dollar seat at Minute Maid would run about 30 at the ballpark.

[IronMan4]

Let me retract my essay above and just blame everything on the rally monkey.

The downfall of America's pastime.

[CMJ]

Once salaries come into balance better I think both baseball and hockey will recover well. Maybe it's a pipe dream, but I don't think either sport is doomed.