Estimating Postseason Revenue For Players And Teams
Last month, I explained the formula Major League Baseball uses to divide postseason ticket revenue among the Commissioner’s Office, postseason teams, and players on postseason teams. Now that the postseason has concluded, we have enough information to estimate the amount of ticket revenue collected and, therefore, the amount the Commissioner, the teams, and the players will receive.
Before I launch into the numbers, I want to emphasize that these are estimates. Rough estimates, in fact. We know the attendance figures for each postseason game, and we know the range of ticket prices each team charged, but we don’t know precisely how many tickets at each price were sold by each team for each postseason game.
To create these estimates, I analyzed each postseason team’s ticket price structure for the regular season, to the extent that information for the 2012 season was still publicly available. (The St. Louis Cardinals made this difficult, as they had already deleted seating/price information for 2012 from their website.) I then took the information we had about each team’s postseason ticket price range for each series (described in my earlier post), and estimated the ticket prices charged by each team for each postseason series. I also used each team’s 2012 ticket price structure to estimate how many seats were available at each price for each series.
This was, by far, the most difficult task. Some teams, like the Yankees, have intricate price structures where each small section of the ballpark has seats at a particular price. Other teams, like the Tigers, have just a few price levels for the 42,000 seats at Comerica Park. To the extent my estimates differ from actual ticket revenue collected, the largest variance will be found in how I divided up each ballpark into different price levels. I may very well have overestimated how many tickets sold at the highest ticket prices charged by each team.
Then I turned to the attendance figures, which I obtained from Baseball-Reference’s box scores for each postseason game. We heard some griping about empty seats at Yankee Stadium during the American League Division Series against the Orioles, and the attendance numbers show that only one of the Yankees’ postseason home games sold out, But the Yankees missed sell-outs by only a few thousand seats. The capacity at Yankee Stadium is just over 50,000. They reached capacity for Game 1 of the AL Division Series, and sold more than 47,000 tickets for their other postseason games. In retrospect, it seems the griping was unwarranted. The other postseason teams were also at or near capacity for each of their home games.
Using the San Francisco Giants as an example, here’s how I estimated how much postseason ticket revenue they brought in for the two Division Series games they hosted.
Division Series Ticket Price Range/Estimated % of Seats at Each Price
10% of seats at $275/ticket
20% of seats at $150/ticket
25% of seats at $100/ticket
15% of seats at $75/ticket
30% of seats at $65/ticket
I then used the average attendance for the two Division Series games to estimate how many tickets sold at each price point. Average attendance over the two games was 43,450. That led to these calculations:
4,350 tickets at $275/ticket = $1,196,250
8,700 tickets at $150/ticket = $1,305,000
10,875 tickets at $100/ticket = $1,087,500
6,525 tickets at $75/ticket = $489,375
13,050 tickets at $65/ticket = $848,250
Total for one game $4,926,375 per Division Series Game
Total for two games $9,852,750 for the Division Series
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
I did the same kind of calculation for every postseason game, 37 in all: two Wild Card games, twenty Division Series games, eleven Championship Series games, and four World Series Games.
As a reminder, here’s how postseason ticket revenue is divided:
- 15 percent of the paid attendance receipts of every postseason game is contributed to the Commissioner’s Office.
- 50 percent of the paid attendance receipts from the Wild Card games is contributed to the Players Pool.
- 60 percent of the paid attendance receipts from the first three games of each Division Series is contributed to the Players Pool.
- 60 percent of the paid attendance receipts from the first four games of each Championship Series and the World Series is contributed to the Players Pool.
- All paid attendance receipts not paid to the Commissioner’s Office or contributed to the Players Pool is shared equally between the two teams in each Series or Wild Card game.
| Estimated Postseason Ticket Revenue | |
| Commissioner’s Office
|
$28,353,800 |
| Players’ Pool | $81,405,020 |
| Texas Rangers | $405,150 |
| Oakland A’s | $2,631,955 |
| Baltimore Orioles | $7,180,567 |
| New York Yankees | $10,056,589 |
| Detroit Tigers | $10,331,914 |
| Atlanta Braves | $593,613 |
| Washington Nationals | $5,514,968 |
| Cincinnati Reds | $4,441,532 |
| St. Louis Cardinals | $17,747,976 |
| San Francisco Giants | $20,499,714 |
The Players Pool money is divided as follows:
- World Series Winner: 36%
- World Series Loser: 24%
- Two Championship Series Losers: 24%
- Four Division Series Losers: 13%
- Wild Card Losers: 3%
Here are my estimates:
| EstimatedPlayers Pool For Each Postseason Team | |
| San Francisco Giants | $29,305,807 |
| Detroit Tigers | $19,537,204 |
| St. Louis Cardinals | $9,768,602 |
| New York Yankees | $9,768,602 |
| Washington Nationals | $2,645,663 |
| Cincinnati Reds | $2,645,663 |
| Oakland A’s | $2,645,663 |
| Baltimore Orioles | $2,645,663 |
| Atlanta Braves | $1,221,075 |
| Texas Rangers | $1,221,075 |
Looking at Players Pool figures from 2009-2011, there’s no doubt my estimates are high. Perhaps very high. The record for Players Pool money was set in 2009 at $59.1 million. In 2010, the Pool was $54.9 million and last year it was $57.3 million.
A few points to bear in mind. There were only 30 postseason games in 2009, and yet that year set the record for Players Pool money because the teams in the postseason included several with the highest ticket prices in the league: Yankees, Phillies, Red Sox, Angels and Dodgers. This season there were 37 postseason games, including five home games for the Yankees, eight home games for the Giants, and three home games for the Nationals, three of the teams with the highest ticket prices in the league, particularly on the very upper end.
So while my estimate of $81,405,020 for the Players Pool is likely very high, don’t be surprised to see a new record for Players Pool money set this season.
Are luxury boxes included in that ticket price distribution? I wouldn’t be surprised if they were higher than $250/ticket.
I included prices based on all publicly available information. Don’t know if luxury boxes are included on the high end, or not.
Is the player pool split evenly among the 25 man postseason roster? The 40 man roster? Or is that determined by each team individually (like give more to Raul Ibanez and none to Valverde?)
My understanding is that the players on the active 25 man roster vote on who gets a “full” or “partial” postseason share. Then the team adds up all the shares that were allocated and divides the player money by the number of shares. So, for example, if a team decided to award 7 additional full shares to players that didn’t make the postseason roster, plus maybe 4 other half shares, that would be 25 + 7 + 2 = 34 shares. So the pool of money would be divided by 34 to determine what a share is equal to.
Correct. Players vote before the end of the season. For example, the Giants players voted in 2010 to give partial shares to lots of non-players, like clubhouse attendants, etc.
No soup for Melky! Not a chance the Giants voted him in.
what about the tv revenue?
dont the players at every level get a piece of that?
No. TV revenue goes to MLB and is distributed to teams on a pro rata basis.
Wow. Very interesting. I had no idea the players got such a large percentage of the gate. What is the breakdown for the regular season?
Players don’t receive any additional revenue from regular season ticket sales. They just receive what’s in their contracts.
That’s a historical artifact — once upon a time, when there were no broadcast revenues and the gate was all there was (aside from minor revenue for ads on outfield walls, concessions, etc), the player’s share of the postseason revenue was created as an incentive for them to try to win games (and not incidentally, also not sabotage them to benefit gambling interests). And it was a big incentive, because the postseason share could be as much or more than their regular salary (in an era when a lot of players had to take other jobs in the offseason to make ends meet).
This is a nice article, and I appreciate the work that must have gone in this, but I have one small critique. Saying your total estimate is $81,405,020 suggests precision in your estimate, whereas you acknowledge that this is highly uncertain. It would be more appropriate to just call it $80 million.
What about merchandise and concession estimates?
While concessions probably don’t differ that much from regular playoff games (a small per game boost at most, due to celebration and the greater willingness to spend money), merchandise sales are likely a significant boost from what teams expect in the regular season.
I know normal merchandise is split among all 30 teams. However, I always figured this was the wholesale price with the retailer taking the normal retail margin for themselves. In the case of stadium stores, the retailer is the home team. Additionally, I wonder if the 30 team merchandise split applies to playoff paraphernalia since that’s specific to the the playoffs.
Yes, what about concessions, etc? I’d like to know just how much money the SF Giants ownership group cleared from this postseason.
I think looking at the trend of the last 10-15 years would be a much better guess. You just have way to many factors for this to not be like a monkey throwing darts.
Based on the information in this post – why is the Tigers players pool larger than the losing championship series teams?
Disregard – I forgot about ‘divison’