Corporate America will watch bad football. Bad baseball? Not so much.

The Kansas City Chiefs went 6-11 last season, but companies spent twice as much on their tickets, season passes, and boxes than they did in their Super Bowl-winning 2024 season.

The Las Vegas Raiders won three games. Companies spent $2.1 million taking clients and prospects to their games — the third-highest total across all sports. The NBA’s Washington Wizards are 16-52 with a few weeks left in the season and have attracted nearly $700,000 in corporate dollars.

This corporate spend behavior is typical on football and basketball games, where companies pay astronomical amounts of money for an interesting venue to woo customers and potential clients, regardless of team performance.

That’s not the case in baseball. When the Cleveland Guardians’ win rate dropped 10 percentage points in 2023, corporate spend fell 78%. The next year, they improved by 10 points, and spend came roaring back, beating their previous record.

Our latest research shows for most professional sports, corporate America will buy tickets regardless of how the team is playing. Except in baseball, where winning actually matters.

For baseball teams, a one percentage point improvement in win rate is associated with roughly 4% more corporate spend. For a franchise that turns the corner — a 10 percentage point improvement in win rate — that translates to about 37% more corporate dollars flowing to that team. The NFL and NBA show no statistically significant relationship between win rate and corporate spend.

Why is baseball different?

First, the purchasing is reactive. We found that 63% of corporate baseball spend occurs in-season. When a team starts winning, companies can buy tickets for next week — 162 games means there’s usually ample opportunity to grab tickets on short notice. The NFL is the opposite: 54% of corporate spend is pre-season, locked into suite leases and season ticket packages before anyone knows whether the team is any good.

Second, football and basketball are more entertaining regardless of the final score. The on-field product matters less when every game has big plays, fast action, and built-in drama. Baseball is slower, and I think a harder sell for clients and prospects who may find the game…potentially boring, unless you’re locked-in watching a team in close contention. There are also way more baseball games than there are football (17) or basketball games (82) per season, so each game is already lower-stakes.

The core economic concept here is elasticity, where corporate spending at sporting events is mostly inelastic to team performance. Companies will buy suites, season tickets, and group outings for relationship-building, regardless of who they expect to win the game. Except in baseball, where the volume of games, the in-season purchasing pattern, and the nature of the sport itself all mean winning drives corporate spend, modestly but measurably.