What's the Baseball Postseason Worth to a Team? Profs Say Millions

Newswise — What's the baseball post-season worth to a team?

New research by University of Delaware economics professors, Charles Link and Dan Brown, shows for each postseason win, the Philadelphia Phillies organization will receive approximately $2.5 million in revenue this year and $3.3 million in revenue next year. And, while the Red Sox and the Rays duke it out, each Tampa Bay win brings in approximately $1 million this year and $1.4 million next year (since Tampa's metro media market is smaller.)

Brown and Link's findings appear in this month's issue of the Journal of Sports Economics.

They show performing well in the postseason is much more important to current revenues than a regular season win-loss record. And, they find, postseason wins are more important to future revenue than they are to current season revenue.

Their results indicate each extra win in the postseason adds more than $450,000 per million people in the metropolitan population while it adds about $550,000 per million people in the metro area to revenues in the next year. This effect is at least partially due to the advance sale of tickets (including season tickets) for the year following the team's playoff appearance.

"This has important implications on player valuation and team building strategies," Link says.

The full journal article, 'Population and Band Wagon Effects on Local Team Revenues in Major League Baseball' in the "Journal of Sports Economics" can be found at the following address: http://jse.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/9/5/470