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If L.A. sports fans only support winners, why do the Dodgers keep drawing so well? Through 52 home games, attendance has averaged a healthy 45,381 per game, compared with a little over 46,000 last year. These days, the team is in last place after having lost 12 of its last 13 games. Actually, Dodger attendance has proven to be amazingly reliable over the years, no matter how the team happens to be doing in any particular season. Owner Frank McCourt calls it the “loyalty factor.” As reported by USA Today last year:
He has done some research on this and says the Dodgers, in terms of total home attendance in Brooklyn and L.A., are “the most popular team in the history of sports. No team in any sport in any country at any time has had more fans come watch it ... about 170 million fans,” McCourt says. “You talk about brands and history and traditions and marketplaces, and there are about 170 million reasons why the Dodgers are what they are.”
Kevin Arnovitz seconded that notion in a piece in Slate.
In baseball’s other two-team towns, Chicago and New York, loyalties are decided based on long-term family allegiance. There’s never been any question who owned Los Angeles. When the Dodgers moved from Brooklyn after the 1957 season, they brought major-league baseball to Southern California. The Los Angeles Angels hung out their shingle to little fanfare in 1961 as an American League expansion franchise. After playing their first five seasons in L.A. proper, the Angels basically ceded the city to the Dodgers by making Anaheim their home in 1966. Over their first 31 seasons—until 2002—the Angels won three division flags but never advanced to the World Series. All the while, the Dodgers racked up world championships and Hall of Famers and churned out homegrown talent from their exemplary farm system. The Dodgers were Hollywood’s team, but it was more than mere proximity that made them stand out. The mellifluous Vin Scully helped Peter O’Malley’s franchise make class a brand hallmark.
Well, OK. But it will be worth looking at television ratings this summer. Going out for a night at the park is one thing, but watching the ugliness at home – with all kinds of alternative distractions – is quite another. (This is where the Lakers took some hits a couple of seasons ago.) If this horrible season goes on, look for some significant slippage after the beginning of September, when the kids are back at school and the players are going through the motions. At least some of that slippage is bound to impact McCourt's bottom line -- if anyone is able to figure out what that is.
Mark Lacter created the LA Biz Observed blog in 2006. He posted
until the day before his death on Nov. 13, 2013.