A look inside the business of the Los Angeles Dodgers

Legal curt fights are the sports journalist best friend. I love it when sports teams end up in court, because through legal fillings we get a look inside the business of the teams. That is the case for the Los Angeles Dodgers, whose owners Frank and Jamie McCourt are going threw a pretty nasty divorce proceeding. While that is too bad, it gives us a look at how the Dodgers are doing as a business.

The news could be a lot better for a team hat has won, and gone to the playoffs in the last few years. Right around 3.76 million people bought tickets for Dodger games last year, but nearly 20% of them were no shows. That number is a little higher than the MLB average, and while they still got the money for those tickets, that is a net loss for the team. Think about that are 20% less people paying for parking and buying concessions at teh games themselves. Not good, not good at all.

The Dodgers have to compete for every sports entertainment dollar with the likes of the Los Angeles Angels, LA Kings, LA Lakers, LA Clippers, and against modern facilities like the Staples Center, Home Depot Center, and Hollywood itself to get people to spend their shrinking entertainment budgets on this team.

They also play in the largest baseball stadium, attendance wise, in MLB today. The recent trend is for teams to play in smaller, cozier settings, but Dodger Stadium still sits 56,000. The Angels ripped out 20,000 seats when they renovated their stadium and the San Francisco Giants and San Diego Padres have downsized themselves into baseball only stadiums. The Dodgers are also being hurt by ticket resale websites like Stub Hub. Since there are so many Dodger tickets available many end up on those kinds of sites, the bad thing is deeply discounted tickets are less likely to get a fan to show up at a game in person.

Related Links:

•Los Angeles Dodgers news and notes
•The Business of Major League Baseball
•MTR Baseball.com