Football verses Baseball: Which is more profitable? In the current contemporary world of professional sports, there are two key players. These are: baseball represented by Major League Baseball (MLB) and football represented by the National Football League(NFL).There are other sports which are more profitable than the two but the argument here boils to which sport between the two is more profitable.
This paper examines both sports from different angles to include attendance, entertainment value, ticket costs, venues, salaries, television revenues and athlete perception. The goal of this paper is to determine which sport is more profitable (Bouchette 12).
From the overall two thousand regular attendances in National Football League was 72,782,013 in 2,416 games at an Average per game crowd of 30,125 whereas the official attendance paid in Major League Baseball was 16,387,289 in 248 games. Therefore, baseball is twice as popular as football.
The popularity in attendance clearly manifests realization of huge amounts of earnings from base ball as opposed to football. Football game is almost on every day on a variety of channels and its ratings are considered dismal when compared to baseball. The main reason for the rating is purely based on season length. This is because in MLB seasons are too short and every game means a lot. This makes baseball more profitable than football (Martin 18).
Television revenue has nowadays become big business in sports industry. This is because television networks are paying large chunks of money to championship game to earn the rights of broadcasting sports activities. The championship game in the Major League Baseball is rated as the highest broadcast every year.
Both MLB and NFL enjoy large television contracts. However the revenue shearing plans are quite dissimilar. The Major League Baseball receives 2.7 billion dollars a year from television revenue. National Football League receives 340 million dollars a year. This fact renders baseball more profitable than football (Bauchette 45).
In regard to the ticket price, baseball becomes more profitable than football. This is because the ticket price usually vary but at average, ticket price for NFL contest was $ 20.07 With the highest average price being $ 30.33 to watch the famous Washington redskin.Where as on the other hand, the average ticket price for MLB was $53.4 to watch the Boston red sox and the lowest average ticket price was $34.07 to watch Milwaukee Brewers.
The average MLB venue can hold up to 70,000 people with the largest stadium in San Diego setting its capacity to 76,000.The smallest of the MLB stadium is found at Boston with the capacity to hold about 33,871.Thus, baseball stadiums are better able to accommodate large numbers of people as compared to football stadiums.This is enough evidence that baseball is more profitable than football (Martin 22).
Player salaries in most times are claimed by team owners as the determinant factor of raising ticket price. In baseball, player salaries are so high that it’s not comparable to the earnings of American public. In the year 2000, the average player salary in baseball was more than two million dollars a year. In football, the average individual salary was less than two million dollars. This is because in football, there are many players and numerous registered footballs clubs (Martin 35)
In reference to the above arguments, baseball players are seen in a better light as compared to football players. Entertainment is yet another point of interest in differentiating between the worth of football to that of baseball. Interestingly, both are affordable, well attended, and fun to watch. Thus, it’s too much unfair to specify which of the sports as the best in its entertainment value (Martin 64)
In conclusion, Baseball enjoys reasonable ticket costs within specified season length, reasonable player salaries as compared to football, best overall revenues, and larger stadiums to accommodate big numbers of the viewers (Bauchette &Martin).
Works Cited
Bouchette, Elestra. Steelers not awash with cash for stadium. Pittsburgh Publishers, 1998. Print.
Martin, Nathan. Sports and Culture Relations: American and Global Perspectives. Prometheus Publishers, 2011.Print.