Nice rationalization and nice stat, but the rationalization is not true and the stat is misleading. The most expensive seat at Oriole Park at Camden Yards, for example, is $80, and that’s only for “prime” games. You can get a seat right behind the plate for a non-prime game for $55.

You can argue the O’s suck and no one wants to pay an arm and a leg to see them and you’d be right, but apparently no one wants to see a “good” team for an arm and a leg either.

Also, by attendance/capacity, which is a much better way to compare attendance between venues due to the number of seats in each stadium being different (if your house holds 50,000 and mine holds 40,000 and we’re both filling it to 90% capacity you’re going to have a higher per game attendance by default), the Yanks are only 7th, averaging 86.5% capacity. For every 100 seats in Yankee Stadium, 13-14 are empty. That’s not something to be proud of if you’re a contending team playing in the biggest city with one of the most rabid fan bases. You can’t convince me that ticket prices have little/nothing to do with that, especially since the old Yankee Stadium was filled above 90% capacity on average for the preceding three seasons.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/attendance?sort=home_pct&year=2009&seasonType=2