By Ben Klayman
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Major League Baseball expects to set revenue and attendance records in 2008 despite the specter of a long-awaited report on players' use of banned performance-enhancing drugs, the commissioner of the U.S. league said on Wednesday.
Bud Selig told the Reuters Media Summit in New York that 80 million people will take in a game at one of the 30 ballparks in the United States and Canada next year, up from 79.5 million this year. He based his projection on comments from teams about the pace of ticket sales for next year.
"We've had this steroid cloud ... for the last four years, and every year we break all-time attendance records, and we'll do it again next year," Selig said, arguing that fans believed the league was serious about investigating the use of drugs. "Our gross revenues have exploded so that the sport has never been more popular than it is today.
"We'll do 80 million next year, I'm very, very confident of that," he added. "Our revenues will continue to grow ... It just is a reflection of how popular this sport is."
Total league revenue should top the 2007 mark of $6.08 billion, but may not match last year's increase of almost $1 billion, Selig said.
"I'm very optimistic, but this was an historic jump and I'm not suggesting that we'll do this every year," he said.
Selig's rosy outlook came on the eve of a report by George Mitchell, the former U.S. senator and a current director of the Boston Red Sox who launched a probe into the use of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball in March 2006.
The report, expected next month, could be a public relations nightmare as dozens, if not hundreds, of players could be named, including top stars. Selig said he was unsure if the report would identify players. Continued...
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