Empty Seats in Baseball's Opening Week

Darren Rovell, sports business reporter for CNBC (and a former ESPN reporter), makes the most of using Twitter. With over 10,000 tweets and over 70,000 followers, his combination of insight and fan interaction makes following his Twitter feed a necessity.

Recently, Rovell asked fans to either send or re-tweet photos from empty MLB stadiums from this past week. Among the usual stadium suspects: Camden Yards (Orioles), Rogers Centre (Blue Jays), Progressive Field (Indians), Sun Life Stadium (Marlins).

The Rogers Centre in Toronto. Just over 11,000 fans showed up

to see the Jays beat the Athletics. The Jays are 4-1 this season.

Oriole Park at Camden Yards. Less than 13,000 fans showed

as the Orioles lost to the Detroit Tigers. The Orioles are also 4-1 this season.

Empty seats at Cleveland's Progressive Field. Last night, less than

10,000 fans showed up. The team is averaging around 15,000 fans through 5 home games.

Unfortunately for MLB, which predicted an increase in attendance this season, these showings have put a damper on some of the robust ticket sales for teams like the Texas Rangers, Minnesota Twins, and the reigning World Series champions San Francisco Giants. Worse yet, even teams like the Chicago Cubs are struggling in their attendance figures during their series against the Diamondbacks. And while some sportswriters have blamed the winter weather and others have blamed technology, namely improvements and availability of TV and Internet broadcasts, Rovell is blaming the teams.

We'll see how the attendance story develops over the course of the season, especially if teams like the Orioles and Blue Jays can keep winning. In the meantime, the following picture, perhaps, sums up the attendance potential lurking in Washington, D.C.

Uniform sighting from the opening series at Nationals Park.

Sorry, Nationals fans. You'll have to wait for #37, the phenom Stephen Strasburg - at least six more months. His impact - "the Strasburg Effect" - could surely come in handy for boosting attendance all by himself.

Do sports fans live in caves?

Just yesterday, I found out about a Major League Baseball promotion that will put two fans in a Greenwich, NYC apartment equipped with enough televisions for them to watch every regular season and playoff game for the upcoming season. Of course, they won't technically live in the apartment, but will be there to watch games from 1:05pm start times on the east coast to the 7:35pm starts on the west coast.

The promotion is called "The MLB Fan Cave," which is a reference to the 15,000 square foot, glass-walled apartment space designed by one of the lead designers of ABC's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. The apartment will not only feature the two fans all season long, but will also house studio space for television interviews and drop-ins from major league players. There will also be set-ups for Internet chats, video games, and fantasy baseball referendums as well as a barbershop, tattoo parlor, pitching alley, batting cage, Pepsi-sponsored 1950s-themed restaurant, DJ booth, MLB store, graffiti wall, Steiner Sports collectibles area, and multiple fan-viewing areas that emulate "Pepsi Porches" installed in various MLB stadiums.

The Apartment Design Layout.

The two fans - a musician from NY and an actor from Baltimore - take in

the first pitch of the 2011 season. The lucky winners were plucked from nearly 10,000 entries.

Both the promotion and the cave have a variety of interesting elements to consider. First, MLB gets on the man-cave bandwagon by channeling the name "cave" to frame the space as a masculine domain. Of course, there are female baseball fans and I wonder whether or not MLB considered their place in a cave, especially since the MLB press release refers to the two winners as "cavemen," and in several videos, the two winners introduce themselves as "caveman" and "wingman."

The two "cavemen" will  watch all 2,430 regular season games, as well as

each playoff game. That's slightly less than all the games that 

Cal Ripken played consecutively from 1982-1998.

Second, the multi-screen setup is an interesting development in sports viewing that is just about reaching its zenith. Just by having multiple games on at once makes me wonder what kind of watching is happening and what kind of fandom is being cultivated. In other words, is a multi-screen setup indicative of the marriage of sports fandom and fantasy sports leagues - where the investment in watching a single game is less important than catching just the pitching performances or at-bats of your fantasy players in a slew of games.

Finally, from a promotional standpoint, kudos to MLB for extending the spectacle and making fans wonder about which is the superior option: attending the game or sitting in a cave.

You can watch videos from the cave here. And of course they are on Twitter and Facebook.