Attendance issues are all over the place in professional sports right now.  With the economy in the tank, football playoffs, which–unlike baseball playoffs–all but automatically sell out, had trouble last year.  Nothing’s gotten any better, even though the economy shows signs of slight recovery.

In baseball, the Houston Astros have stopped playing “guess the attendence figure” because the stadiums are so empty.  (They’ve also stopped having the racing Hummer H2 videos on the screen inbetween innings, but separate story, that.)  They’re offering promotions out the wazoo and still can’t put anyone in the seats.  That’s despite the fact that, even with a terrible run of bad injuries, the Astros are sorta-kinda in contention.  (As we mentioned yesterday, we wouldn’t call it that if they didn’t manage to hoist themselves into the race every. single. year.)

Meanwhile, though, it isn’t just teams with little shot to be important.  The San Diego Chargers–yes, the ones who made a serious playoff run last year–can’t sell their tickets, even though they sold out all their games last year.  They can’t sell their luxury boxes either.

Now, the economy is most of the problem here, but that raises a point: are leagues perhaps going to get smaller? Might league ownership, a la the Milwaukee Brewers, be the only answer for some teams?  The most interesting one, to UPH, is whether or not this puts enough added pressure on teams to perform that it begins to play into the other issues facing sports right now.

For example, if a team might leave a city…the mayor will care, right? All that lost revenue.  How much would he care? Enough to subsidize a team personally, or with city money? Enough to overlook problems, such as gambling or athlete bad behavior in town?  These questions are the ones looming.  What, exactly, happens now?