There's no doubt that there is some creative accounting in terms of producing attendance numbers, I can't debate that. I also don't think that's anything new though. I don't have set numbers at the moment, but MiLB has been fairly steady over the past ten years with some ups and downs from year to year. Basically been between 41 and 43 million total. Went up actually from 2012 to 2013 by a quarter million. I don't think counting the falling number of new ballparks is an accurate way to measure interest. The more that built new parks in previous years means there is less to build now, if that makes sense. Also, a number of parks undergo renovations on a yearly basis that keeps them up to date and extends usage/life of the park.
An interesting report that discusses many of the topics we have discussed in this thread is published by NumberTamer and discussed in pages 73-91 in the 2013 Minor League Attendance Analysis. I'll link to it, and if not allowed, mods please remove.
http://numbertamer.com/files/2013_Minor_League_Analysis.pdf
Put it this way... how you know the numbers are good or not is, say...
...baseball returns to Portland in 2001. By the end of the season, the owners are trying to offload the team. They stick around a couple more years, the Pacific Coast League has to take the team over for a year and change, they groom an owner to take over, he tries to sell by the end of the year, and the eventual buyer tries to split the Beavers and Portland Timbers into separate stadiums, with the obvious outcome being the Timbers make the renovation and...
...after an aborted effort at the Memorial Coliseum site (right next to Rose Garden / Moda Center)...
...after a Portland neighborhood rejects using urban renewal money for the ballpark after having talks with the owner for two years...
...and after a Portland suburb tries and fails to overcome a private landowner's objections to a ballpark at a former cinema site...
...the Beavers leave town for Tucson, which had lost a team only 3 years prior.
In that process, a San Diego suburb was engaged (the Beavers were the Padres' affiliate), but that failed...
...Boise dipped their toes into the debate, but that failed...
...who knows how many other western cities were offered...
...and six years after the whole process began, a downtown El Paso stadium will begin hosting the Chihuahuas this year.
If attendance were truly maintaining, that process would have a few suitors. Of course, the real sales time took place when the economy nosedived. I know. Of course, sports are supposed to be downturn-resistant.
Meanwhile, Fresno built a ballpark and is basically continuing to bail out the losses.
Meanwhile, Memphis received a privately built ballpark, it was the envy of the league, but 10 years on the stadium went into forebearance as attendance dropped, and the city has bailed out the team by buying the ballpark.
Meanwhile, Tacoma got $30 million in public funds to renovate the stadium... or more specifically, install luxury suites, NOT change the old seating bowl, and REDUCE the capacity of the ballpark.
Cooper Stadium, the cited example in Columbus, has been replaced by a stadium with a smaller capacity.
There's more, but I don't want to rub this in.
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You know, I can point to the ECHL Boise team. In the first few years, the owners (and their bought-and-paid-for radio talk show host) apparently lamented that they only built a 5,000-seat arena when they could probably have sold more tickets in a larger venue as part of a proposed convention center expansion. BTW, that's never happened, and the land is currently ticketed for the replacement ballpark that I've partially mentioned above (though the question of whether it should be more suitable to the current Short A team or a possible AAA team is still wide open). Over time, however, I have to believe they made the right call, and for other cities to really have a chance, they should build smaller than they plan to build. Boise's attendance has slowly leaked down (or, to a degree, they may have stopped puffing attendance so much... my last visit was a Saturday night in a pretty full arena), but I believe it would have happened faster if they'd built larger. Boise is also kind of unique from what I know: the only real concourse and all the concessions are inside the arena bowl (though you can buy tickets for tables in the upstairs sports bar area, and that's close to a top-down view), so you can kind of watch the game (or maybe get hit with a puck) while ordering your food. I can think of some offshoots of that format that I'd like to think could be done with private money.
Mostly, I shrug to read this. It's kind of painful. I'm not sure there's that many cities where hockey can really be staged. How do we think outside the box on this?
