Attendance is not down as much as everyone says it is
Darren Rovell is not impressed with last week’s strories about attendance being down 7%:
Last week, when the Associated Press wrote that Major League Baseball’s average attendance for the first two weeks was off 6.9 percent from last year, many news outlets just reported the number. Well, I just did the math and it’s not even half as bad.
While the focus is on the empty seats behind the plate at Yankee Stadium and Citi Field, the truth of the matter is that Major League Baseball is currently on pace to average about a three percent decline in attendance as compared to last year.
He explains, of course, and it’s pretty darn straightforward. Some charts too.
(at this point is there any doubt that this link came courtesy of Pete Toms?)
I’d love to see this visited during September 2009 and September 2010, and see what the differences are then.
I wonder if Rovell has MLB Extra Innings. The paid attendance is probably not far off but it definitely does not pass the smell test when you watch games all over the league…TONS of empty seats everywhere.
Unfortunately, Rovell failed to account for the day of the week, nor did he account for the fact that this season started later than last season.
I wonder how many games at Cincy (9,800 tonight), KC (9,800) or Baltimore (11,857) he’s been watching.
MLB is not even outdrawing hockey in a lot of markets right now.
NY, BOS, STL, and SF are always going to draw – other than that it’s going to be a long, long year in most “baseball” cities.
(Luckily the Nationals weren’t playing at home this week, so I can’t check out their sub 10k attendance.)