baseball speech (economical/ financial aspects)

Question
Hello Brian.

I'm a student from Germany and I have to hold a speech about baseball. One part of my talk deals with economical and financial aspects of baseball in Northamerica. This section is supposed to last for 3 ?4 minutes. As I play baseball in Germany myself, I have knowledge about the rules etc. the only part I'm searching information for is the economical and financial part.
So I would be very pleased if you can help me there. Interesting information for me would be for example:

-   How many clubs are currently playing in the MLB?
-   How many people work for the MLB (plus how many people work for the clubs?
-   How much money is earned (business volume/ profit in the MLB and clubs)
-   Is it possible to devide the earnings into ticket-pricing, merchandising, advertising etc.
-   How much money does the economy pay for supporting the clubs?
-   Is there a fee that clubs have to pay for playing in the MLB?
-   Are there other financial/ economical aspects for getting a licence for the MLB saison?
-   How many people visit the games throughout the saison?
-   Anything else you could think of

Thank you very munch in advance!
Have a great saison.

Best,
Tim Santen (Hamburg Hanseatics)


Answer
Tim,

I'm happy to hear that people all over the world are interested in American baseball!  Unfortunately, many of the questions you have asked are not disclosed by major league baseball or the teams.

I'll answer the ones I know about below:

1)  There are 30 teams currently in major league baseball.
2)  Each club employs between 100-250 people (not counting their players).
3-5  Baseball and the individual clubs will not disclose these numbers, but is a good series of articles on the web written up a couple years ago discussing baseball finances.  The internet address of the first is:  http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=1294

That should help answer some of your questions.

I don't know how much fee each team pays, but attendance figures are on the internet if you search a bit.

Hope this helps!

Brian