The average cost of running a ballpark per game is around $300,000, according to the former team official. Not all of that money would be saved in an empty stadium because it includes energy costs, but a substantial amount is to pay for game-day staff that wouldn’t need to be present without a crowd.
The math gets murky in the secrecy surrounding other franchises, including Derek Jeter’s Miami Marlins. The New York Yankees Hall of Famer is the chief executive officer and a 4% owner of the Marlins.
Using the Braves as a reference point and figuring in publicly available data on attendance and the average cost of a ticket, the Marlins seemed to earn a profit with fans in their ballpark.
There are plenty of caveats. For instance, the franchise reaps the benefits of shared revenue whether or not anyone shows up to Marlins games, so they get a cut of the gate when, say, the Braves sell out.
The Marlins’s average attendance per game last year was 31% of the 32,776 customers the Braves drew. Apply that to the Braves’s $2.1 million per-home-game revenue from fans and that’s just $644,000 in ballpark sales for the Marlins.
The next step is adjusting for the difference in ticket prices. The Marlins’s average, which doesn’t include premium seating and luxury suites, was $22.55, according to data compiled by Statista. The Braves’s average ticket cost was $29.44, yielding a discount of about 25%. Apply that to the adjusted revenue figure and that leaves about $500,000 per game of ballpark sales for the Marlins last year.
Compare that with the average cost of running a ballpark, and you’re left with $200,000 per game.
It’s a ballpark figure, and there’s plenty to dispute, but this is one reason why negotiations over the 2020 baseball season drag on.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.