Business News and Information

Yesterday, the Boston Red Sox decimated the Colorado Rockies in the first game of the World Series at Fenway Park, bringing Colorado’s win streak to a grinding halt and landing in the record books themselves for scoring more than any team in baseball history in a Series opener. After reading this post, feel free to tune in for game 2 tonight.

Now that the recap is complete, let me delve into the real topic this post, and that’s money, honey.

Whether you agree with baseball being “America’s pastime” or not, it is a big business with a ton of money to be made. With potential for lots of money come lots of hands in the pot.

Fans, both diehard and bandwagon, are snapping up tickets in Colorado, so much so that the team’s website crashed (though the crash was the team’s own fault, Ben Worthen of Business Technology, wrote a good article on the crash).

Licensed goods, like jerseys, mugs, visors, hats, watches, etc. are inexpensive to manufacture and are almost always a big source of revenue. From 1988 to 1991 retail sales of authorized baseball goods jumped from $200 million to $2.1 billion (I don’t make this stuff up, I got that tidbit here).

Having a successful sports franchise can also increase the home cities coffers, from the money earned from increased tourism in the area to the property taxes on the stadium.

Between the Broncos upcoming Monday Night Football appearance to the Rockies having home field advantage in game 5 (if it goes that far) this makes Denver the place to be.

I’m no Sylvia Brown, but I predict sold out hotel rooms and packed bars by Monday night.

Oh, and in case anyone in Denver needs to call in sick Monday or Tuesday – I don’t think nursing a hangover counts, but who am I to judge – a funny post at wikiHow gives some helpful information for pulling it off.