Baseball Strikes and the Demand for Attendance

Abstract

Professional baseball has experienced numerous work-stoppages over the last 30 years, including three which resulted in the cancellation of games. Existing estimates of the demand for attendance at Major League Baseball games has found that only those events which caused the loss of games influenced attendance. This paper revisits the issue of whether strikes affect attendance and finds that even those lockouts and strikes that do not cause games to be canceled are associated with significantly lower attendance. Moreover, despite dramatic differences in the severity of the three strikes that canceled games, one cannot reject the hypothesis that the effects are the same. Finally, the evidence here suggests that attendance is adversely affected by events leading up to negotiation of a new Basic Agreement between the players and the owners.sports attendance, strikes