BALTIMORE — On Memorial Day, 43,898 lacrosse enthusiasts packed M&T Bank Stadium to watch Michael Powell lead Syracuse past Navy 14-13 to capture its ninth NCAA title.
The NCAA final four drew 130,000 that weekend.
Major League Lacrosse’s Baltimore Bayhawks, meanwhile, are lucky to break 4,000 these days, a tough sell in a city in which lacrosse probably shouldn’t have to be sold.
“I’ve given up trying to figure out the Baltimore market,” Bayhawks player-coach Gary Gait said. “I’ve spent a lot of years with the Baltimore Thunder [an indoor team that no longer exists], and everyone said, ’Because it’s indoor, no one will support it.’ Then we brought the outdoor game, and we’re thinking we’ll draw 10,000. I don’t know what the answer is.”
Neither does anyone else involved with the struggling franchise.
“There was a lacrosse fan base that existed in Baltimore, but there wasn’t a Major League Lacrosse fan base,” Bayhawks general manager Jay Pivec said. “Our fan base is everyone from the Orioles to the carnival to the movie theaters. … I think, over time, we’ll build our fan base so that we can start talking about those numbers, but I think the expectation was that it would happen right away.”
That expectation stemmed from the success of the college game in the city in the last decade. The buzz from this year’s final four prompted Sports Illustrated to run a two-page feature on the sport’s popularity. Television ratings for the title game posted a 50 percent increase from two years ago.
And if this is a lacrosse revolution, consider Baltimore the Bastille. Half of this year’s Final Four field (Navy and Johns Hopkins) traveled less than an hour to the game.
Yet for the last four years, the Bayhawks have bathed in red ink and basked in virtual anonymity. Despite reaching the league’s championship game every year of their existence and fielding a roster deep with stars, interest among even the most fervent lacrosse fans has been tepid at best.
“We really went down to the grassroots level as opposed to what the approach was in the past, which was, ’Let’s spend a lot of money on advertising and people will show up,’” Pivec said. “That really just doesn’t work. You can’t sell Bayhawks tickets like you sell cars.”
The Bayhawks lost money in each of their first three seasons and turnout dropped as well.
The team averaged 4,156 in announced attendance in 2001, when it played at Johns Hopkins. That figure slipped to 3,478 in 2002 at spacious M&T Bank Stadium. The Bayhawks returned to Hopkins last year and bottomed out at roughly 1,200, according Pivec.
“There was a concern of, ’Was it worth going through this? Is there light at the end of the tunnel? Will it ever be a viable entity?’” Pivec said.
To make matters worse, these numbers were helped by a bit of inflation. The Bayhawks are known to count every soul present for the game, whether they paid for the ticket or were paid to work security. Roughly 60 percent of the announced attendance actually pays for tickets, according to a source close to the organization. The team has 150 season-ticket holders.
In their inaugural season, the Bayhawks expected crowds close to 10,000. They needed 5,000 to break even. Losses in 2002 alone are believed to have been in the hundreds of thousands — a substantial amount for a team whose 2004 budget is roughly $400,000.
Baltimore, which is 5-4 and tied for first in MLL’s National Division, got a bump in attendance this season by moving to Towson University’s Johnny Unitas Stadium and slicing ticket prices. By cutting costs and averaging close to 4,000 in their first four home games, the Bayhawks could break even for the first time.
However, they are still far short of original expectations for a region that, on every other level, is obsessed with the game. One theory is the Baltimore region is too spoiled by good lacrosse. From the youth leagues through the college game, Central Maryland is home to many of the best players in the country.
“Baltimore’s really an isolated situation,” said ESPN lacrosse analyst Quint Kessenich. “I think they’ve reached their saturation point. The fans up in Boston are coming out this summer like it’s going out of style. They don’t get to see that quality of lacrosse.”
The apathy runs so far that Powell broke the hearts of lacrosse fans in the state for a second time recently. Two months after he helped stop the title run of the underdog Midshipmen on Memorial Day, Powell notified the Bayhawks he would not report, claiming he needed a break from the game.
“It’s very disappointing. We felt we did everything we could to accommodate his burn-out factor,” Pivec said. “I think the saga will continue and pick up again in the fall. We own his rights, so he will be playing here or he won’t be playing anywhere.”
MLL, a single-entity organization that covers players’ salaries but doesn’t cover operating costs for the individual teams, gets its most encouraging attendance figures from cities without franchises. The league held games in Seattle and Denver last year that drew more than 8,000 people each.
MLL has noticed. It plans to expand to 10 teams in 2006. Denver, the home of a popular indoor team, and Seattle are all but assured teams.
As a whole, the league has lost $8.5million in its first three years, which is acceptable for “Body By Jake” star Jake Steinfeld, its most famous backer. Compared to the failed Women’s United Soccer Association, which was $100million in debt when it folded after three seasons, the amount is negligible.
Pivec thinks the Western excitement will carry over into the Baltimore area. In his first year as general manager, he sliced the team’s advertising budget and focused on selling ticket blocks to local businesses, which donate them to local youth leagues.
The Bayhawks hope to increase home turnout by 10 to 12 percent a year. Even if they do, it still would take another decade to reach their original attendance goals.
“I think the people that come out love the game,” Gait said. “But there’s room for a lot more lacrosse kids to come out and for a lot more lacrosse people to support us.”
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