Baseball's Most Valuable Fans

by Christina Settimi,

Some cheer louder, some are more passionate. And some are worth a lot more than others.

It’s settled: Fans of the San Francisco Giants are better than the fans of their bitter rival, the Los Angeles Dodgers. In fact, Giants’ fans are the best in all of Major League Baseball, at least in terms of providing value for their team.

In our first ranking of the most valuable fans of MLB, we flipped tradition on its head and took a look at what audiences around America are worth to the business of baseball. We divided local revenue of each team (including such sources as local television and radio revenue, gate receipts and sponsorships) for the 2008 season by the population of its metropolitan area, according to the 2008 U.S. Census Bureau estimate. The resulting revenue-per-fan figure is a rough yardstick of a team’s ability to capitalize on its fan base, regardless of market size.

Revenue figures are before revenue sharing and exclude national media and licensing revenue, which is divvied up equally to all 30 MLB team. For cities with two teams, we divided the population in half for each team, figuring the city’s fan base was split more or less evenly between the two.

A look at the top-ranked Giants’ $78 revenue per fan reflects just how juiced Bay Area fans are to see their team, regardless of its last few lackluster seasons. In comparison, the Dodgers, who made it to the National League Championship Series last season, only generated $38 in revenue per fan.