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| SOFTBALL LINKS |
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Survival vs. Success
by Dave
Monday, November 19, 2007
I have been musing lately about the plight of the National Pro Fastpitch (NPF) women's professional softball league. There just has to be a way for this thing to not only survive but thrive. Our sport has been growing by leaps and bounds over the past ten years. Yet, go to any NPF game and there is something missing, namely, paying fans. Many NPF games have less than one thousand fans in attendance. 2,000 is a large crowd for the league. Somehow, there has got to be a way to get attendance higher than it currently is.
The most successful women's professional sports league is probably the WNBA. Throughout the WNBA's approximately 10 year history, the men's professional league (the NBA) has supported the league financially. This was by no means charity - the NBA was looking into ways it could increase female interest in basketball in order to further its own ends. They decided that supporting a women's league would be an important part of their initiative to increase women's interest in basketball. And the effort has paid off. The NBA experienced a double-digit increase in women aged 18-34 who watched the league's playoffs in 2006.
Presumably the same sort of partnership would work for major league baseball (MLB). And MLB is a "developmental partner" of the NPF. I'm not certain of the exact details of the arrangement but I have never seen anything which suggests that MLB puts out the kind of money the NBA does to support the women's league. The MLB-NPF arrangement seems to be less of a direct financial helping hand than the NBA-WNBA one. I think taking a look at the WNBA may help analyze the NPF.
There are a lot of differences between the WNBA and the NPF. For one thing, the NBA has more than a dozen teams while the NPF has just 6. The women's basketball league plays just 34 games vs. 82 for the men. The softball league plays 48 regular season games vs. 162 for MLB. The WNBA schedule is a much higher percentage of the men's league than the NPF's is.
Attendance is much higher for WNBA games than it is for the NPF's. Attendance at WNBA games is measured in the thousands, often ten times the attendance of the typical NPF game. WNBA games routinely draw in excess of 8,000 fans at the gate. The NPF often struggles to break 1,000. Why that is the case is not readily apparent except that the WNBA seems to do a better job promoting its product.
It would be easy to figure out why the WNBA is a relative success while the NPF is not, if, for example, there were a lot more girls playing competitive basketball than their were playing softball. Basketball remains the most popular sport among girls but participation at the high school level (about 460,000 kids) is no more than about 125% of that for softball (about 365,000 kids). According to NPF's softball facts section, the Amateur Softball Association (ASA) registers about 1.2 million girl softball players. So the WNBA's success cannot simply be attributed to a higher potential audience.
One major difference between the two women's professional sports leagues is the WNBA does not play at the same time the NBA does. The two diamond sports' seasons, on the other hand, completely overlap. I cannot say for sure that this is the reason NPF has such low attendance but somehow I can't help thinking they're missing at least a potential opportunity here.
I've been to a couple of NPF games over the years. I would have liked to have seen more of them but we're always at our own tournaments or practicing. Yet, in August, when most travel softball is over, we're completely freed up. There are a few NPF games in August but not many at any one venue. I'm not sure whether pushing the season further into the fall would benefit NPF as then they might compete with MLB's season ending pennant races and playoffs. But playing a large part of the season when most girls are busy with their own tournament schedules can't work to benefit attendance. This notion is however proven a bad one since August games do not generally draw better than June ones.
The best idea I can some up with is for professional fastpitch to move indoors during the winter. I would love to be able to go watch real softball during the winter months. Setting up a league in the winter is not an easy thing to accomplish since most indoor facilities are ill-suited to the game. You need at least 200 feet from plate to fence, plus several feet for foul territory, not to mention space for the stands (hopefully fairly large stands accommodating at least 2,000), concessions, etc. But with all the money that is spent for outdoor facilities, you'd think a little more might be raised to put up some "bubble" structures or the like and set up facilities for a professional women's winter circuit. This would require capital but that's where baseball might come in.
The NBA is reported to have put up as much as $15 million per year for many years to support the WNBA. After about ten years of play, the league is just now looking to make a profit. I believe MLB could use a similar amount of money and help the league transition to indoor, during the winter, play. I don't fully appreciate the economics of building indoor facilities but I know of one place which built a large bubble for around $3 million. I can't say whether that included the land or not - it was just a partial rumor I heard. That facility has enough space under roof to conduct simultaneous baseball, softball and soccer games. The fields are each abbreviated versions but let me reiterate, these three contests can be held simultaneously. I don't think it is a stretch to conclude that a full fledged venue could be built inside this dome which would easily house 2,000 fans. And these facilities could be used for other purposes in order to help generate revenue. Teams could conduct winter clinics for softball players - something that is always in demand during January, February. Winter tournaments could also be held.
Well, that's my thought for the day. I'd like to see NPF become a huge success. I have no expertise in this particular area but I can use my imagination to at least come up with some ideas. If you've got others, I'd be happy to publish them here.Labels: NPF
Permanent Link: Survival vs. Success
 
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