As many people have said, baseball is recession proof. "Baseball has made it through depressions, wars, and scandals." This quote came from an MLB agent.
Many teams were thinking that the economic downfall would also hit the numbers that teams are drawing to the games. After the first month of the season, there were exactly 287 less tickets sold than last April, and that is with one less weekend of games this year than last. People come out to support their teams, almost no matter what. Baseball is the national past time. Smaller market teams like the Marlins, Reds, and Rays have seen significant increases in ticket sales compared to last April. I find that very uplifting. Home team fans are coming out to support their teams even when the economy is struggling.
However, this isn't to say that no team's are struggling. The Yankees and Mets are struggling to fill their new, giant-sized stadiums, mostly because of extremely high ticket prices. These teams have big enough fan bases to fix that problem though.
The Tigers, who reside in Detroit, may be the heaviest hit team. With all the car manufacturing problems, state unemployment in Michigan is over 12%. The Tigers are battling this by offering previous season ticket holders the chance to buy smaller season ticket packages.
The bottom line is, people will continue to fill the seats, regardless of how the economy is doing, because you can always go to the ballpark to forget about the world for a little.
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