The NBA is Not Recession Proof

Jason Fleming of HOOPSWORLD breaks down the numbers:

Attendance is down an average of 2,056 fans across the league per game. Considering the average ticket price this season is $49.47, that’s a $101,710.32 loss PER GAME this season compared to last. And no, that doesn’t cover the rest of the things people spend money on at games like T-shirts, drinks, food and parking. This is data we don’t have, but it would be interesting to know if concessions are down proportionate to the average attendance, or if they are down even lower as people go to cheaper alternatives since stadium food tends to be expensive.

Just for fun, consider this as well: At that dollar loss per game, that extrapolates out to almost $4.2 million for a 41-game season. Again, this doesn’t take into account concessions, and considering that people are trying to get more bang for their buck now it’s likely teams will be selling less of the tickets higher than the average price, and more of the ones lower than average. What does that mean? It means $4.2 million is the very low end of the estimate.

Multiply that by 30 teams and you get a loss of $125.1 million across the league compared to last season in ticket sales alone.

Head over to HOOPSWORLD for additional facts and figures.

With the United States economy struggling, look for David Stern and company to supplement the NBA’s stateside revenue by speeding up their efforts to globalize the game.

There may be a few teams losing money at the gates, but as long as sponsorships and television contracts remain steady, the NBA should be able to weather the storm.

UPDATE from HOOPSWORLD:  In doing research on the attendance figures I came up with a number that the league attendance is down 2,056 fans per game. Unfortunately, upon further review that number should have been divided by 30, so the number should have been almost right on the numbers that were posted for the 2007-08 season.