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sports
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Business New Haven
5/3/1999
By: BNH
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Before we get to today's lecture, class, a quick pop quiz:
I. The state of fan interest in professional sports in Connecticut today is:
A. Reaching a fever pitch, fanned by the excitement attending the (hoped-for) arrival of the NFL's New England Patriots.
B. Nearing the saturation point, especially with regard to minor-league baseball.
C. Pretty much the same as everywhere else.
II. The most popular spectator sport in southern Connecticut is:
A. Eastern League baseball
B. American League Hockey
C. Pilot Pen tennis
D. Yale frog-jumping
III. Southern Connecticut fans who plunk down hard-earned dollars for tickets to sporting events say they most want:
A. A good value for family entertainment.
B. A safe, clean environment with ample, inexpensive parking.
C. More cockfights between periods/innings.
D. Anna Kournikova to play a three-setter on a 90-degree day.
IV. The average season ticket-holder in southern Connecticut is:
A. A 35- to 54-year-old “weekend warrior” with 2.5 kids.
B. A responsible civic booster doing his bit to help the teams succeed at the box office.
C. Drunk.
D. Mrs. Maria Tartaglia of 347 First Ave., West Haven.
Whether by design or serendipity, sports has become big business in the region and the state in the 1990s, with fans able to choose among minor league baseball, hockey and basketball, world-class tennis (women's tennis, at least) in addition to the traditional intercollegiate sports offerings dating back to the beginning of the 20th century, when the concept of “leisure time” first emerged among working Americans.
As the state with the highest per-capita income in the nation, those who live in Connecticut have money to spend on entertainment, including live sports offerings. And they do - about a million baseball fans passed through the turnstiles in New Haven, Bridgeport, Norwich and New Britain in 1998.
American Hockey League franchises in New Haven and Hartford attract more than a half-million customers to see ice hockey just a notch below the big time.
And while the seven-year struggle to make a go of a semi-major men's professional tennis tour flamed out last year in a sea of red ink, a week-long women's tour event at the Connecticut Tennis Center in New Haven will serve as a tune-up for the U.S. Open and at least prevent the $20 million facility from becoming overgrown with weeds from disuse.
In basketball, the Connecticut Pride, which plays its home games at the Hartford Armory, on April 28 closed out the Sioux Falls (S.D.) Skyforce for the team's first Continental Basketball Association (CBA) championship.
In football, the New England Sea Wolves (née New York CityHawks - whatever happened to Lions, Tigers and Bears?) just opened their first season of Arena Football League play at the Hartford Civic Center. Optimism abounds within the AFL, which just signed an agreement with the NFL that would allow the latter to purchase an equity interest of up to 49.9 percent in the 13-year-old indoor league.
And of course who can forget the sweetest of all sweetheart deals - the bold (some would say fantastic) state/city of Hartford initiative to build a 68,000-seat stadium to lure New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft from the nation's sixth-largest TV market to a place Boston columnists derisively refer to as “America's File Cabinet”?
With so many sports offerings, the question becomes: How much is enough - or too much?
It's not only that the burgeoning sports offerings are competing with one another for the finite spectator dollar. They're likewise competing with everything else consumers spend their entertainment dollars on, from movies to amusement parks to concerts to live theater - the list goes on and on.
Unlike the TV money-fueled big leagues, it's tough to make a buck selling minor-league sports in small or even mid-sized markets. And it may be that those who do it best do it as a labor of love, not to get rich.
Yet minor-league sports continue to grow, if not necessarily thrive. Minor-league baseball and American Hockey League attendance continues to trend upward nationwide, and both the Eastern League (baseball) and AHL have recently expanded.
Last season minor-league baseball hit a 49-year attendance high of 35.4 million nationwide. (In 1949, when that figure was last exceeded, there were 448 minor-league teams in 58 leagues; today there are 174 teams in 15 leagues.) And attendance at A, AA and AAA ballgames has grown in 13 of the last 14 seasons.
In Connecticut, much of this joy in Mudville has come on the backs of taxpayers. New ballparks in New Britain, Norwich and Bridgeport were funded by between $14 million and $17 million in state funds. New Haven's Ravens, meanwhile, haven't been able to get the $2.5 million the team has asked the state for facilities improvements.
Part of that is Yale Field's peculiar status as the property of Yale University, which doesn't need the improvements for its own baseball team. And lawmakers are reluctant to bestow gifts on an institution with $6.6 billion in the bank.
Much of the lure of sports at the minor-league level, where the players are mostly anonymous, are the facilities themselves. With no Major League Baseball affiliation, the Bridgeport Bluefish, playing in the Park City's brand-new Ballpark at Harbor Yard (whose name recalls Baltimore's hugely successful Oriole Park at Camden Yards) drew more than 4,400 fans per game in 1998, causing Ravens management to tear their hair out over the interloper's territorial infringement.
“There's a trend that's going on all across the country,” notes Ravens General Manager Chris Canetti. “When new parks are being built, they're being built in ideal locations as part of an economic-redevelopment project for a city. That's what they did in Bridgeport.”
AAt 197,342, the Ravens' home attendance last year, was, accordingly, the lowest in their five-year history - just over 3,000 fannies in the seats each game on average in 72-year-old Yale Field. Of the state's three Eastern League clubs, the Yankee-affiliated Norwich Navigators set the pace with 243,817 (just under 3,700 per game), with the New Britain Rock Cats bringing up the rear at 181,643 (2,838 average).
Another minor-league team making do with an aging, unlovely facility is the Beast of New Haven AHL hockey club, which just concluded its second season at New Haven Veterans Memorial Coliseum.
In 40 home dates, the Beast averaged 4,301 fans per game, for a total of 172,040 for the season. The league average attendance for 1998-99 was 5,460.
The Beast's box office performance was down slightly from the 1997-98 inaugural-season figure of 179,471 (4,486 per game). Still, Beast President and General Manager David Gregory knows that building a fan base virtually from scratch takes time, and the ownership group he heads seems well-capitalized and committed to making it work here.
But with minor-league baseball and hockey attendance flat or down specifically in New Haven, and with one of the tennis world's most successful promoters (Butch Buchholz) having given up the ghost on a promising men's event here after just two tries, it's legitimate to ask just how good a market the area really is for sports.
Beyond cozy parks, fan-friendly promotions and accessible players, part of the appeal of minor-league sports lies in its affordability.
Driven by skyrocketing player salaries, the four major sports have priced themselves beyond the budget of many fans. The loyalties of baseball fans in Connecticut are divided among the Yankees, Red Sox and Mets, but what a choice - the two AL teams have the highest average ticket prices in the majors, with the high-payroll Mets not far behind.
And with 81 home dates a season, Major League Baseball offers by far the cheapest average ticket among the big four: At upwards of $200 for a family of four, it's become increasingly rare to see kids at Knicks, Celtics, Rangers or Bruins games - a trend the clubs may rue in a decade or two. And unless a season-ticket holder owes you a big favor, tickets to see the NFL's New York Giants are not to be had at any price.
So, small-time sports are a superior value for those who value the games themselves, as opposed to the millionaire players or their trademarked major-league logos. But consumers don't buy things solely because the things themselves are inexpensive; they buy them because they want the things in the first place.
Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce President Matthew Nemerson was an active behind-the-scenes player in the efforts to bring tennis, baseball and hockey here in the first place. Despite his enthusiasm, however, he is realistic about what it takes to forge solid, long-term success.
Of greater New Haven, Nemerson says: “Because of geography, I think it's always going to be a tough market. There's such a density of entertainment options here. Also, we tend to be skewed toward slightly wealthier households here than in other parts of the country. So people are willing to travel a little farther to go to the beach, or go skiing, or eat out at a little fancier place.
“Minor-league sports are a great bargain, and a wonderful family activity, but we're somewhat less concerned about the cost of entertainment than other parts of the country.”
Then there's our proximity to big-league teams in Boston and New York, whose high-cost offerings might not fly in many other markets, but have little difficulty filling seats in the posh Big Apple-Hub corridor. Many of those well-fed fannies hail from Connecticut.
So, what can keep some of those sports dollars closer to home? Attractive, accessible venues, for one thing. Winning teams help, too - even though the function of most minor leagues is to develop players for their parent clubs - not to win games per se.
Looking at his prospect-laden roster, the Ravens' Canetti was enthusiastic about his prospects for improvement at the box office in 1999. Then his club roared to a 2-11 start out of the gate, reminding Canetti of one of the oldest clichés in all of sports.
You can't win 'em all.
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