Bobbleheads 2020

It's the most wonderful time of the year!

Players have reported to camp, pitchers are stretching out, and Spring Training is underway.

But the best part is that teams have announced their 2020 promotional schedules which gives way to the question: has Major League Baseball begun to appreciate the potential of the bobblehead?

Hint, the San Diego Padres may have figured it out...

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There are two things team must consider when making decisions about promotional giveaways (items that I loosely consider to have a resale value of at least $10) at sporting events:

1. Promos increase ticket sales by a significant amount; and,
2. Promos allow the team to charge more for tickets.

To understand the promotional impacts on attendance, I undertake the following steps, following the same procedure that I have done for the previous four years:

• Scrape each team's website for their promotional giveaway schedule for 2020,
• Parse through the text of each schedule to identify dates with promos such as:
• replica World Series rings;
• collectible coins;
• collectible pins; and
• Bobbleheads!
• Predict attendance at each game with and without a hypothetical promo using a simple regression model,
• Choose the best dates for which promos would provide the most value to the team; and,
• Compare my hypothetical promo schedule to the actual promo schedule and estimate the additional revenue from my promo schedule.

There are currently 223 promo days scheduled for the 2020 MLB season. While a few teams either have not yet published their promotional schedule or are not offering meaningful promotions this year (Miami and Colorado), 2020 should ultimately feature a similar number of promo days as we are accustomed to seeing.

In 2020, the model says there are 172 games that have been sub-optimally chosen to feature a promo. I therefore reassign 77% of promo days (172/223) and find that the entire league may be foregoing ticket sales to the tune of ...

... $6.4 million!

Here's this years number in some historical context.

Year		Total Promos		Reassigned Promos		Forgone Revenue ($)
2016		232		166		3.2M
2017		231		170		4.0M
2018		254		185		3.8M
2019		227		180		5.0M
2020		223		172		6.4M

As seen in past years, the St. Louis Cardinals, Los Angeles Dodgers, and Chicago Cubs lead the league in terms of foregone revenue, but an appearance at the top of the list of losers is largely in part due to the fact that these teams have either a) above-average number of promos; or, b) above-average ticket price (i.e., Chicago Cubs).

Excluding the aforementioned clubs without promos, the San Diego Padres had the least foregone revenue. This is partially because of their more reasonably priced tickets (3rd cheapest in the league) but also because the two games they chose to feature promos were ranked the 4th and 5th best options by the model: the model chose to reassign the promo games but picked games that would sell only ~109 more tickets each.

Way to show them how it's done, Padres!

Below are the results for each individual team. How did your team do?        

	Team		Total Promos		Reassigned Promos		Forgone Tickets (#)		Forgone Revenue ($)
1	St. Louis Cardinals		19		13		34,635		1,230,942
2	Los Angeles Dodgers		18		15		20,469		872,393
3	Chicago Cubs		7		6		14,007		833,292
4	San Francisco Giants		6		5		13,562		519,681
5	Milwaukee Brewers		20		11		18,055		513,493
6	Atlanta Braves		18		15		14,224		418,746
7	Washington Nationals		10		9		5,630		248,415
8	New York Yankees		8		6		4,910		233,829
9	Toronto Blue Jays		8		7		7,631		226,562
10	Boston Red Sox		3		3		2,604		154,445
11	Philadelphia Phillies		5		4		3,650		131,529
12	New York Mets		11		8		4,743		130,916
13	Minnesota Twins		6		5		3,277		107,104
14	Houston Astros		5		4		1,822		90,822
15	Seattle Mariners		4		4		2,165		81,762
16	Chicago White Sox		5		5		2,401		68,133
17	Pittsburgh Pirates		10		8		2,861		65,253
18	Texas Rangers		4		3		2,281		58,740
19	Cleveland		6		4		1,776		55,344
20	Cincinnati Reds		11		7		2,468		52,175
21	Baltimore Orioles		9		5		1,618		48,465
22	Tampa Bay Rays		8		7		2,144		48,314
23	Los Angeles Angels		4		4		1,545		47,773
24	Arizona Diamondbacks		5		4		1,492		31,132
25	Detroit Tigers		6		4		1,076		30,461
26	Oakland A's		3		3		1,116		27,127
27	Kansas City Royals		2		1		774		25,433
28	San Diego Padres		2		2		217		4,818
T-29	Colorado Rockies		0		0		0		0
T-29	Miami Marlins		0		0		0		0
	Total MLB		223		172		173,153		6,357,099