The days of paying 20 bucks for a beer and hot dog at sports stadiums may be heading into their final inning.The Baltimore Orioles on Wednesday released a value menu of cheaper stadium food and drink prices, joining a growing list of team owners who have created lower-priced options for once-overpriced concessions.The Birdland Value Menu offers 12 stadium favorites at a low price11 of which are $5 dollars and under. At stands where such value prices are offered, a hot dog costs $4 and a beer, $5. Pretzel bites, popcorn, nachos and other concessions are also now discounted to under $5. Elsewhere in the Orioless stadium, beer cost $11 and hot dogs cost anywhere from $4.10 to $8.25, depending on the stand.The average price for a hot dog in all Major League Baseball (MLB) stadiums is $6, and the average price for a beer is $7. And at football games, the average price for this combo is $15, with some stadiums charging as high as $20.Fan aversion to these high prices has caused a rethink of conventional pricing schemes, with value menus trickling into stadiums across all professional sports, while MLB has moved to capitalize on what appears to be a winning strategy.The Atlanta Falcons introduced value pricing in 2017, slashing hot dog prices from $8 to $2. The teams in-stadium transactions rose 30% in the following five years. The new Utah Hockey Club currently offers four different $3 concessions.And in December, the Phoenix Suns announced their own $2 value menu, which included hot dogs, water, fountain soda, a bag of chips, and popcorn.A family of four used to spend $98 on hot dogs/water/popcorn. Now they can enjoy that same meal for $24, Suns owner Mat Ishbia wrote in an X post following the announcement.The Orioless Birdland prices are less cheap than some of their MLB counterparts. The Toronto Blue Jays has offered a cheap Dugout Deals menu for the past five seasons, where a hot dog costs CA$3.49; the Seattle Mariners released a similar value menu in 2022, where most items cost $3.The pricing moves within the sports industry are part of a larger trend. Fast-food restaurants, for instance, have introduced value deals to entice price-conscious consumers back into restaurants as foot traffic has declined.Baseball in declineThe change in menu pricing may be especially needed for baseball teams. For the better half of the last decade, Americas Pastime has lost viewers and attendees. Through the 1970s and into the 1990s, the World Series consistently received more than 30 million viewers. In 2024, there were just 14 millionand that was the highest its been since 2017.The league made rule changes in 2023 to make the game more entertainingsuch as introducing the pitch clock and increasing base sizeand viewership grew again. But the MLB has still frequently been criticized for pricing out fans.In 2024, the average price for a family of four to attend a baseball game was $140and thats only counting ticket prices, not concessions. The prices can also be much higher when a team is doing well. Some reports said World Series single ticket prices averaged almost $4,000.Getting more fans to the stadium means getting more fans to turn on the television. Excellent stadium experiences can lead to increased team loyalties, turning casual viewers into fanatics.Major League Baseball has existed for more than a century. Its survival over the next century may depend on creating the next generation of fanatics who can afford to show up to stadiums and cheer loudly.