According to the Sporting News and New York’s Daily News, Major League Baseball is in serious negotiations with a promoter in Puerto Rico about the possibility of playing some regular season games there as early as the 2010 season.
This of course is not new news; The Montreal Expos played 22 “Home” games there in 2003, and with the advent of the World Baseball Classic there seems to be a lot of interest in having some regular season games played there.
The Florida Marlins have also negotiated in recent years about the possibility of playing a few home games at Hiram Bithorn Stadium in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
All four major American Sports have made the move to hold regular season games outside the country in an attempt to grow their brands world wide. However no other league is in a more prime position to move a few games to alternate venues since each team has 81 home dates a year to play around with.
The only hang up is the low attendance at games like this, especially those that were played in Puerto Rico. In 2006 133,855 fans came to see the 10 World Baseball Classic games held in Puerto Rico. On average that means 13,385 fans came to each WBC game.
In 2009 86,698 fans came out to see the six WBC games held in Puerto Rico. That year they averaged 14,449 fans per game. In 2003 the Expos played 22 games in Puerto Rico. 322,882 fans came out to see the Expos play multiple opponents. The average crowd that year was 14,222.
Those numbers are significant because they are less than the average 2009 utterance for the three worst drawing clubs; the Pittsburgh Pirates, Florida Marlins, and Oakland A’s.
So it would seem that holding games in Puerto Rico will not give the MLB an attendance boost, but opening up a new market for MLB merchandise could be beneficial to the league and its 30 teams.
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