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Article: Baseball now mirrors NBA, NHL; teams try discount ticket schemes to bring fans out to parks early in the season. (Sports).(National Basketball Association )(National Hockey League )(Brief Article)(Industry Overview)
- Article from:
- Insight on the News
- Article date:
- June 24, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 News World Communications, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The defining note in baseball's season this spring has been the large swath of empty seats in ballparks coast to coast. Nine stadiums in all have posted their worst crowds in the season's first month, a terrible indicator of the game's health.
Poor attendance no doubt owes greatly to the game's rising ticket prices and an off-season that saw Major League Baseball try to kill the Minnesota and Montreal franchises, send hated owner Jeffrey Loria to Florida and ultimately take over the Expos itself.
But fans have shown up to watch baseball in tough times before, and even with this season's attendance down about 8 percent, 70 million will attend a game ...