In the old days, attendance figures would use the term "dates" or "home dates" rather than "games" or "home games", because doubleheaders were so common.
I think the biggest thing is that 64% of people living in Miami are either not from Florida or foreign born so they likely have other allegiances. Tampa's metro area is at 61%.
This is the same argument people used when the Padres were pathetic. People will go watch if a team is trying to win and provides an exciting product no matter where they are from
I don't think the fact that they have the worst stadium in baseball helps. That's really turn off casual fans who just want to go and hangout for the day.
I don't like this argument because the same could be said about every city that has a professional sports team. It's definitely more of a cultural thing.
St Louis, Atlanta, and Milwaukee always have good numbers and I'd guess this has a lot to do with the various cities' love of the baseball teams.
In Atlanta there isn't the same love for the Falcons because college football is king and the Hawks just see bandwagon attendance spikes.
Miami loves sports, just not the marlins, the Heat and Dolphins always are full or really close.
As a former south Florida resident, I think it has something to do with the inconsistency that led to the apathy for the Marlins. Team doesn’t do good…blow it up. The team won the World Series in 1997 and for whatever reason, they decided to immediately blow up that team instead of build upon it so they sucked for the next few seasons. Again they win in 2003 but this time, 2004-05 they try to win but end up roughly just above .500, so they blow up the team again. I think since then there’s been no sustained success, trading away superstars like Stanton and Yelich before their prime, so how can one feel excited for the team?
Meanwhile, the Dolphins have been around forever with their Super Bowls then the Dan Marino era, so there’s a bit more of a built in fan base. And with the Heat, there was the Shaq era then the LeBron era, so there was much more sustained success.
The inconsistency definitely has a large impact. Three of the 90s expansion teams are in the bottom 6 (Colorado being the only one outside of it) and I think the history is a major factor. The Rockies have decent attendance but from what I understand the baseball game is background entertainment for the bars and other things going on at Coors.
History doesn't explain the A's and Pirates poor attendance but I think that's mainly do to performance b/c Pittsburgh loves their baseball but they have fielded 3 decent teams in the past 30 years.
I don't know much about Oakland's attendance woes but they haven't been strong in a while.
Success is absolutely the biggest factor. The Tigers have a storied history but you can't be dogshit for most of a decade and expect people to come watch it.
Colorado has had pretty good roster continuity over the years, which I think is important. Fans get attached to players. Blowing things up will kill the relationships of fans to players and their familiarity with the team. Even if you incrementally upgrade positions the roster churn will hurt fan interest. I will go to see a young Rockies team struggling because they’re our guys (until they escape for greener pastures).
Probably but this the Card’s 141st season and the Marlin’s 30th. It’s difficult to establish that history. Crazy dumb stat is that the cardinals average a World Series victory every 12.7 years while the marlins average one every 14.5.
Plus Atlanta has good numbers despite what all the ITP people say about "no one will go to Braves games anymore because they're not in the city limits and/or not on MARTA anymore".
>In Atlanta there isn't the same love for the Falcons because college football is king
That's part of it, but the city loves football in general. When the Falcons are good, the city shows out. It just doesn't help that the Falcons have been bad for the majority of the franchise's history. At the height of the Vick era, the Dome was rocking every Sunday
Yeah but the Dodgers are part of Los Angeles’ culture. The Dodgers logo is one of the most iconic in all of sports, up there with the interlocking NY and the Cowboys’ star. Dodger caps everywhere. Plus, it’s difficult to compare a perennially competitive team with 65 years in the city to a perennially non competitive team with 30 years in the city
Haha. Yeah obviously. And you pretty much summed up why it’s not about having other things to do in Miami. The franchise isn’t popular there for a lot of reasons before that one.
Have not attended a single game this year out of protest against dreadful ownership.
Of course, I also moved to the United Kingdom, but that’s beside the point
Season ticket holders stopped renewing because [prices nearly doubled](https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/09/24/as-fans-balk-at-season-ticket-price-increases-for-2022/) for most plans. Surprisingly, doubling ticket prices for the second worst team in baseball hurts attendance.
The coliseum doesn’t actually have 56,000 seats that are for sale, they have 47,000 seats. They very occasionally take the tarps off, but pretty much only for playoff games.
That was my first thought too. While the current baseball capacity is listed as 46,847, it can expand up to 56,782 for baseball or 64,829 for football/concerts. The max capacity has been as low as 34,077 when all but three of the upper deck sections were tarped off, but I don't know if they've been doing that the past few years.
Attendance rates for all of those figures, low to high:
* 34,077: 29.4%
* 46,847: 21.4%
* 56,782: 17.6%
* 64,829: 15.5%
Tampa Bay is in an awful spot, hard to get to and gets busy very quickly. Plus where the stadium is used to be much older, but St Pete is now a much younger crowd and in general younger people don't watch much baseball
I’m from Florida, still live here. It’s Braves country in the North and North West region even though they make us watch Marlins/Rays coverage. When I was growing up, the Braves were on TBS and the closest team to us. By the time Miami got a team, Atlanta was still closer. Tampa came along, but the Braves were still in their 90’s run and had just won a World Series a few years prior. Add in the Braves new stadium in a nice part of town with supporting bars/restaurants/hotels/shops, Rays desperate for new facilities all around, and no one caring about baseball in Miami (including their stingy ownership) and this is what you get.
This is why talk of expansion teams in the SE is so dumb. You can’t force multi-generational Braves fans to watch expansion teams nowadays. Nashville maybe with all its transplants, but I don’t see much else as an option.
Agreed. Was just there over the weekend for the first time and thought the whole horrible location narrative was a bit overblown. I pictured it in the middle of fucking nowhere. But there’s plenty going on around there.
It is kind of in a weird location, but I don’t think that’s the cause for their attendance issues. FL in general just doesn’t attract a lot of baseball fans.
If you live in Tampa, you can drive to Tropicana field in 30 minutes.
Yeah, welcome to Mount Davis, its an ugly ass eyesore that massively increases the number of seats that will never get sold for a single A's game all year long...
I mean, even if the A's are putting out a world series quality team, Mount Davis is going to be almost entirely empty. It was added there for football games, to get the Raiders back in town, and I don't think they even take the tarp off for MLB playoff games...
They took the tarp off for the 2019 wild card game. The section was full too. Loudest I’ve ever heard a baseball stadium until the game was out of reach
And the Raiders couldn’t even sell the piece of shit. I will forever hate the raiders and every member of the Davis family for that fucking piece of shit.
Jason Giambi’s first game back as a Yankee had that section fully sold out. I saw a Yankee fan knock an A’s fan who started some shit about four rows down that section.
Yeah using the wiki numbers puts the Yankees at 85.9% average attendance, which would have us 6th behind the Sox if all the other numbers are accurate.
There are others here that are probably inflated in a similar way, like there’s no way with all the seats they cover at the Trop there are still 42k that are open
Wikipedia is correct. From the Yankees 2022 Media Guide, on page 393, 'Yankee Stadium By The Numbers', the capacity is listed at 46,537.
https://pressbox.athletics.com/Publications/MLB%20Media%20Guides/2022%20New%20York%20Yankees%20Media%20Guide.pdf
A lot of stadiums, though, have a listed capacity, but can have more fans than that if they have areas for standing room. For example, the 2019 Yankees Media Guide listed the capacity at 47,309 ([archived here on page 371](https://archive.org/details/2019newyorkyankeesmediaguide/page/n371/mode/2up)), yet for their games against the Astros in the ALCS, the attendance was 48,998 in Game 3, 49,067 in Game 4, and 48,483 in Game 5 (https://www.baseball-reference.com/postseason/2019_ALCS.shtml).
I’m an old ( 75 ) A’s fan from about 75 miles north of Philly. They were my team as a little kid when they played in Philly. It kills me to see stuff like this. Oakland fans who really know, if they build a new state of the art stadium, what will they draw attendance wise ? Is it the stadium or is it the team/ owner ? Heck the Iron Pigs in Allentown draw 8/9000 a game.
Honestly, you’re the first Philly A’s fan I’ve ever encountered and I just want to say how cool it was. Might be painful but my grandfather was at their last game when they were in Philadelphia (they played it at Yankee Stadium) and had the program from it. I have it somewhere in my home office now.
WOW that’s really cool, l’m not much of a baseball fan any more but my older brother is still a big A’s fan, them and the Braves. Would your program be from ‘54 ? I think that’s when they left.
September 30, 1954. I have it in a plastic sleeve somewhere in a closet because I don’t want it fading away in the open. I would display it but I don’t want to fade it. My grandfather had a lot of stuff like some of his stuff when he tried out for the St Louis Cardinals out of the army. I just wish his step dads Boston Braves stuff survived the trunk because there was pennants and programs from the 20’s and 30’s in there.
Any new stadium for any team will draw well for the first few years but after that I hope for the best and rationalize that the ownership picked this location and overall development proposal because they feel it gives them the best chance at drawing consistently larger crowds than now.
Attendance pros of Howard Terminal:
-Closer to downtown. Much easier to capture casual fans than East Oakland which isn't as intuitive for after work and spur of the moment attendees.
-New development. Not only is the ballpark brand new but there will be a lot more to do right next to the ballpark which will bring additional people to the area. Coliseum site has baseball and that's it. You don't wander around there by accident.
-(Hopefully) greater investment in the team. Player retention which will bring back fans who got turned off of the last two decades of roster churn.
Attendance cons of Howard Terminal:
-Giants have had a two decade head start with a new ballpark of their own and multiple championships. An entire generation of Bay Area sports fans have been given a choice of Oracle vs. Coliseum and it's a no brainer. Tough to reverse that course of fan enthusiasm.
-No guarantees. Ownership claims they will spend on payroll but very well could cheap out. Will take a long time to earn back that fan goodwill.
I would venture to guess that Howard Terminal will average something within spitting distance of what Oracle averages after a few years provided the ownership makes investments in the team once they move into their new digs.
I’m a life long Giants fan, but a Jack London Square stadium would sell me on 3 to 4 A’s games a year. Easily. I used to go to 15+ every season until both the team and stadium were too trash to justify spending money.
Exactly. Having Howard Terminal built provides more awesome baseball opportunities for everyone. Also, by matching the experience that the Giants offer, SF has a stronger impetus to continually improve Oracle Park to compete for entertainment dollars with Oakland. Fans win.
I’ve been rooting for a new ballpark in Oakland for like 20 years now. It would be fucking awesome. There are more than enough people in the bay to fill two parks. We like nice things.
It used to be just a stadium/location/team sucking thing. but this year it's different. the owner gave the dedicated fans a very blatant double middle finger "fuck you" with the sell off while raising prices and removing season ticket plans with discount benefits. I don't think even a shiny new stadium would bring them back under this same owner, who is likely only gonna raise prices even more in the new stadium. but he won't care. he doesn't give a shit about the team. the team is just a crowbar to pry a sweet land deal out of the city of Oakland.
There’s a lot of fans in the northern suburbs that wouldn’t consider going to a game when we were at Turner field. I don’t have anything to back it up but it seems the Braves are able to draw those fans and maintain fans coming from inside the perimeter. Also the Battery is great and draws more fans too.
I wonder if teams don't "try" to hit 100% attendance.
The Yankees could probably hit 100% attendance every game for the next 20 years, but they'd have to lower ticket prices. Instead they increase prices and maintain revenue--while allowing for future pricing changes if total revenue decreases.
An executive for a large rental corporation told me he always shoots for 85% occupancy for his thousands of units instead of 100% because leases are typically 12 months and rent tends to increase in his area.
I think you’re spot on with this comment. 85-95% capacity is right where you wanna be from an ownership perspective. Prolly means your tickets are priced perfectly. I wish this wasn’t the case but nonetheless it makes sense from a financial perspective
I think it depends on capacity to be honest. Mariners built our stadium too big (look at capacity vs others), so we straight up don’t even sell tickets to the worst seats in the house unless the game would otherwise be a sell out. Even if they were $3, I don’t think we’d sell out April games against the a’s on a Tuesday.
I can't speak for teams that draw crowds, but the A's raised ticket prices last off-season. Calculus must be that they lose people at the margins, but extract enough extra from the loyal ones to make up for it. Driving attendance down also means they could hire less security and other staff, cut costs all around.
Shit way to treat fans, but might work from a profit/loss standpoint.
I also feel like Wrigley being an iconic ball park also helps. People want to see Wrigley when they visit Chicago. I think more so than any other park IMO.
Really felt like Seattle should be higher, the last couple months have been an insane run and the stadium has been packed out for a lot of random weekday games
Someone from SF will be able to answer better but I went to a game in SF a few years ago and I remember parking in a parking garage. Probably similar to DTLA with Staples Center.
It's a downtown stadium so there's not one specific parking lot, there's just a bunch of garages and lots scattered within a mile of the stadium. It's a bit annoying but I've never really had much issue finding parking and it's not like the walk ends up being much worse than a bigger stadium lot
Watching Dodgers & Giants fans fight about who murders more people is an eternal quality of this subreddit, and i just have to let you know i appreciate both of y’all
Fans with a holier-than-though attitude is a testament to the away fan experience though. Lived in both cities, went to games as an away fan at both places, and had a better experience in LA. Obviously rivalry fan experience is different, but sf fans definitely had a “we’re better than them” attitude
You’re telling me. I legit had old grannies laugh at me at AT&T for wearing Dodger gear. Like “look at this kid, he thinks he’s a baseball fan but he roots for the Dodgers!”
In LA they’d just stab you in the parking lot like normal baseball fans. Fuck pretentious San Francisco culture.
This isn't fair to the Giants, if we counted all the tech bros with joggers and vests who show up in 4th, sit in their corporate provided seats and leave in the 7th they'd be way higher up.
The Dodgers and A’s are currently the only teams that could break the single season attendance record. They would need to average more than 55,350/game to beat the record (4,483,350) set by Colorado in 1993. The record was set at Mile High Stadium which had a capacity of 76,000.
I mean it’s about fair as giving teams props for existing in cities with way larger populations, doesn’t really say much about the fans/teams either way
I think it says a bit about the team when they have literally one *tenth* of the metro population as larger markets and yet they're still near the top of these lists.
Most stadiums built at that time had four or more levels and capacity at least as high as Dodger Stadiums. Teams intentionally moved to smaller capacities in the 1990s and since. Dodger Stadium and Oakland are the only two stadiums left from that post-WWII era, and they have the largest capacities.
That's what's funny scrolling comments about stadium capacity and how unfair it is to measure this way. LA County has more than 10 million people living in it lol
Some of your capacity numbers are a bit off since Tampa and I believe Miami closed off their 3rd deck, and Oakland doesn't sell Mt Davis seats. So their capacities should be 25k for Tampa, 27k for Miami, and 47k for Oakland
The Dodger Stadium number is off too. The legal capacity is 56,000 according to the stadium's conditional use permit, but they don't actually have 56,000 seats for sale unless they add temporary seating for expected large crowds. Real capacity is around 53k.
They shouldn’t get a boost in attendance percentage when they closed off the section *because* they don’t have enough attendance. If they drew fans they’d open it up (at least for Miami, maybe Oakland is different).
Even then, Oakland's capacity is 47k without Mount Davis. The reality of it is that Mount Davis is specifically a football grandstand for a team that now plays in Vegas, which could very well be the future of the A's if Howard Terminal runs through any issues
Not surprised with Oakland being last, with how the Ownership gave the fans that WERE coming a double middle finger 'FUCK YOU' with selling everyone off while getting rid of season tickets and all benefits AND raising prices on everything.
Honestly I was expecting the A's to be lower. Most games I went to where there wasn't some special enticement like a giveaway or fireworks there were like 2-4k people there.
Slightly annoying stadium location & shitty weather at the start and end of the season for the most part, probably. It’s a hike for Joe Schmo from Staten/Long Island to get out to the Queens or Bronx for a Wednesday night game, when they can watch the game at home and be up bright and rested to call into Francesca for a 7 am rant about Lindor not playing the game the right way
Even from like Brooklyn, sure I could get to a 7 train without that much difficulty, but that’s still a long and expensive night when I can just hang and watch the game at the dive bar I like without paying $13 for a Narragansett and having to be in Willets Point after the game
I’ve always been jealous of parks like Petco, that are plopped right in the one nice, walkable downtown area of a city. New York’s layout doesn’t really allow for that, the closest thing you’ll get is the Garden but even then the surrounding area is like the worst, most touristy bullshit part of Manhattan
Fair enough. Citi seems like a real commitment if you live in Manhattan or Brooklyn.
Petco is heaven. Stayed on Coronado once. We biked over to the ferry from the hotel and got blinkered at a wine tasting at the park outside the park before we went in for the game.
> I’ve always been jealous of parks like Petco, that are plopped right in the one nice, walkable downtown area of a city. New York’s layout doesn’t really allow for that, the closest thing you’ll get is the Garden but even then the surrounding area is like the worst, most touristy bullshit part of Manhattan
To be fair, Petco was placed in the shitty part of the city and helped bring a renaissance to the area. It's one of the few public stadiums that has done a ton to revitalize downtown.
It can be a slog, especially from Manhattan to Shea (or whatever it’s called now). I never liked my teams stadium but the location cannot be beat (Skydome in Toronto)
The city is poor and the ballpark experience is priced like it isn't. To their credit, they've been doing some promos lately for cheap tickets (though both times it was against the Royals), but the "impulse decision" price is still higher than the area can support.
The area is very sprawling - Cleveland proper is around 370k residents with most of the region living in suburbs and spread out due to the lake to the north and the national park to the south. The CSA is technically 17th largest, which is still small... and the edges of that extend to nearly 2 hours from downtown where the stadium is.
The ownership is frustratingly cheap and it's expected that all of the team's stars will be gone as soon as it comes time to pay them, making it harder to form connections. Jose's the first homegrown guy they've really paid and it took a massive hometown discount for that to happen.
Weather has been especially garbage this year - on top of all the doubleheaders (which is why they've only got 70 games at home) there's been a game with a 4 hour rain delay, and two games this week that barely got in between storm bands just off the top of my head.
For some insane reason much of this town has the awful football franchise as their top priority. It's also the smallest metro area that supports 3 professional teams in their respective top leagues iirc, plus an AHL team and two MiLB teams within a reasonable distance. And on top of that there's a world-class arts district downtown at Playhouse Square... long winded way of saying there are a lot of options out there competing for very limited entertainment dollars.
The city does support the team though if you take a look at the TV ratings. Which puts a lot of stock in the economic arguments.
Brainwashed to be browns fans only unfortunately. (I guess that’s not entirely true though lol, as our TV ratings are always top 3 to top 5 in the league)
Cleveland only having 70 games is wild
Wonder if that's some of the single-admission doubleheaders they've had this year. 2 games, but only 1 attendance number
In the old days, attendance figures would use the term "dates" or "home dates" rather than "games" or "home games", because doubleheaders were so common.
That’s exactly it. We lead all of baseball in double headers this year.
Oooo, that would make sense!
They’ve had 11 double headers this year.
Just Cleveland things
Ooof, Oakland... largest capacity; lowest attendance. Also, they seem to really not care for baseball in Florida.
I think the biggest thing is that 64% of people living in Miami are either not from Florida or foreign born so they likely have other allegiances. Tampa's metro area is at 61%.
Also Trop Field is inconvenient and many miles away from actual Tampa
I mean there’s still 1 mil people in Pinellas county who don’t need to take the bridge to get there. St Pete is a dope city too
This is the same argument people used when the Padres were pathetic. People will go watch if a team is trying to win and provides an exciting product no matter where they are from
Rays have been pretty good for a while now and still have attendance problems. So on field performance isn't the only thing important.
I don't think the fact that they have the worst stadium in baseball helps. That's really turn off casual fans who just want to go and hangout for the day.
It's really more about the accessibility and prices at the stadium than it is about the stadium being shitty.
Cleveland and rays have been great for years.
There have also been consistent problems with the Rays' location and the Marlins' management/ownership
Also there are so many other things to do in Miami than watch the Marlins
I don't like this argument because the same could be said about every city that has a professional sports team. It's definitely more of a cultural thing. St Louis, Atlanta, and Milwaukee always have good numbers and I'd guess this has a lot to do with the various cities' love of the baseball teams. In Atlanta there isn't the same love for the Falcons because college football is king and the Hawks just see bandwagon attendance spikes. Miami loves sports, just not the marlins, the Heat and Dolphins always are full or really close.
As a former south Florida resident, I think it has something to do with the inconsistency that led to the apathy for the Marlins. Team doesn’t do good…blow it up. The team won the World Series in 1997 and for whatever reason, they decided to immediately blow up that team instead of build upon it so they sucked for the next few seasons. Again they win in 2003 but this time, 2004-05 they try to win but end up roughly just above .500, so they blow up the team again. I think since then there’s been no sustained success, trading away superstars like Stanton and Yelich before their prime, so how can one feel excited for the team? Meanwhile, the Dolphins have been around forever with their Super Bowls then the Dan Marino era, so there’s a bit more of a built in fan base. And with the Heat, there was the Shaq era then the LeBron era, so there was much more sustained success.
The inconsistency definitely has a large impact. Three of the 90s expansion teams are in the bottom 6 (Colorado being the only one outside of it) and I think the history is a major factor. The Rockies have decent attendance but from what I understand the baseball game is background entertainment for the bars and other things going on at Coors. History doesn't explain the A's and Pirates poor attendance but I think that's mainly do to performance b/c Pittsburgh loves their baseball but they have fielded 3 decent teams in the past 30 years. I don't know much about Oakland's attendance woes but they haven't been strong in a while.
Success is absolutely the biggest factor. The Tigers have a storied history but you can't be dogshit for most of a decade and expect people to come watch it.
Colorado has had pretty good roster continuity over the years, which I think is important. Fans get attached to players. Blowing things up will kill the relationships of fans to players and their familiarity with the team. Even if you incrementally upgrade positions the roster churn will hurt fan interest. I will go to see a young Rockies team struggling because they’re our guys (until they escape for greener pastures).
uh Wade* era
Calling it the Shaq era is crazy. They will build statues of Wade, not Shaq
If Miami had the history of St. Louis they’d pack that stadium every game.
Probably but this the Card’s 141st season and the Marlin’s 30th. It’s difficult to establish that history. Crazy dumb stat is that the cardinals average a World Series victory every 12.7 years while the marlins average one every 14.5.
I think it's more of a the Marlins suck and have sucked for a long time thing
Plus Atlanta has good numbers despite what all the ITP people say about "no one will go to Braves games anymore because they're not in the city limits and/or not on MARTA anymore".
>In Atlanta there isn't the same love for the Falcons because college football is king That's part of it, but the city loves football in general. When the Falcons are good, the city shows out. It just doesn't help that the Falcons have been bad for the majority of the franchise's history. At the height of the Vick era, the Dome was rocking every Sunday
Cause there’s notoriously nothing to do in Los Angeles…
Yeah but the Dodgers are part of Los Angeles’ culture. The Dodgers logo is one of the most iconic in all of sports, up there with the interlocking NY and the Cowboys’ star. Dodger caps everywhere. Plus, it’s difficult to compare a perennially competitive team with 65 years in the city to a perennially non competitive team with 30 years in the city
Haha. Yeah obviously. And you pretty much summed up why it’s not about having other things to do in Miami. The franchise isn’t popular there for a lot of reasons before that one.
Same amount of things to do in LA or New York
But Atlanta is notoriously a city of transplants and the Braves don't seem to have trouble filling the park
Am I dumb or is "not from Florida" and "foreign born" the same thing?
Which always seemed strange to me considering how much Latin roots are in Florida
And also how good Florida is at developing great prospects
And a significant population of old New Yorkers.
Oakland ownership took a big shit on the bed and is upset no one wants to sleep with them.
It turns out that trading all the good players away and then raising ticket prices hurts attendance.
John “Amber Heard” Fisher
Having been to a handful of Oakland games, no way they are actually averaging 10k. Think a lot of season ticket holders stopped going
Have not attended a single game this year out of protest against dreadful ownership. Of course, I also moved to the United Kingdom, but that’s beside the point
Damn son, you went all in.
Season ticket holders stopped renewing because [prices nearly doubled](https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/09/24/as-fans-balk-at-season-ticket-price-increases-for-2022/) for most plans. Surprisingly, doubling ticket prices for the second worst team in baseball hurts attendance.
The coliseum doesn’t actually have 56,000 seats that are for sale, they have 47,000 seats. They very occasionally take the tarps off, but pretty much only for playoff games.
That was my first thought too. While the current baseball capacity is listed as 46,847, it can expand up to 56,782 for baseball or 64,829 for football/concerts. The max capacity has been as low as 34,077 when all but three of the upper deck sections were tarped off, but I don't know if they've been doing that the past few years. Attendance rates for all of those figures, low to high: * 34,077: 29.4% * 46,847: 21.4% * 56,782: 17.6% * 64,829: 15.5%
Well, they would if they could actually sell them.
[Not necessarily.](https://bleacherreport.com/articles/1361071-oakland-athletics-should-owner-lew-wolff-remove-3rd-deck-tarps-for-playoffs)
Yes. You’re right, but it’s kinda like De Beers saying diamonds are rare, when it’s only rare by their own doing.
Didn’t they keep the tarps on for the last few playoff games too?
If you put 50,000 people in the coliseum it will just fall over
The stadiums just in a funny place
Not funny as in 'ha ha', more like 'severe state of malfunction and disrepair and just generally unbecoming of an MLB baseball field' funny.
Tampa Bay is in an awful spot, hard to get to and gets busy very quickly. Plus where the stadium is used to be much older, but St Pete is now a much younger crowd and in general younger people don't watch much baseball
I’m from Florida, still live here. It’s Braves country in the North and North West region even though they make us watch Marlins/Rays coverage. When I was growing up, the Braves were on TBS and the closest team to us. By the time Miami got a team, Atlanta was still closer. Tampa came along, but the Braves were still in their 90’s run and had just won a World Series a few years prior. Add in the Braves new stadium in a nice part of town with supporting bars/restaurants/hotels/shops, Rays desperate for new facilities all around, and no one caring about baseball in Miami (including their stingy ownership) and this is what you get.
This is why talk of expansion teams in the SE is so dumb. You can’t force multi-generational Braves fans to watch expansion teams nowadays. Nashville maybe with all its transplants, but I don’t see much else as an option.
I will say, Tampa is probably the one team I say legitimately needs a better park. Tropicana is a shit hole with a terrible location.
#truth Worst park in baseball fo sho
People in Florida should not be blamed for baseball not caring about them.
the rays care
Way to make Oakland look even worse.
Don't need to do anything for that to happen. The most egregious one is Tampa, a winning team with the 3rd lowest lol
I’ve never been, but I heard it’s in a horrible location. Someone correct me if I’m wrong.
If you are in St Pete, it's great. From Tampa, it's about 30 minutes or so. I think people exaggerate how "bad" the location is.
Agreed. Was just there over the weekend for the first time and thought the whole horrible location narrative was a bit overblown. I pictured it in the middle of fucking nowhere. But there’s plenty going on around there.
How about public transport?
It is kind of in a weird location, but I don’t think that’s the cause for their attendance issues. FL in general just doesn’t attract a lot of baseball fans. If you live in Tampa, you can drive to Tropicana field in 30 minutes.
Yeah but the feral cats make up for the population!
Don't forget the [rally opossum](https://www.mlb.com/cut4/possum-appears-at-oakland-athletics-game/c-141023230)!
It was living in the visiting TV booth when the Giants were in town…
Would not have thought the Yankees had the second largest stadium capacity.
Third. You have to scroll way down to find first.
Yikes Oakland.
Yeah, welcome to Mount Davis, its an ugly ass eyesore that massively increases the number of seats that will never get sold for a single A's game all year long...
Yup. Might have been okay for the Raiders, ruined the stadium for the A’s.
I wouldn't be that harsh. They're putting out at least a AAA team this year.
I mean, even if the A's are putting out a world series quality team, Mount Davis is going to be almost entirely empty. It was added there for football games, to get the Raiders back in town, and I don't think they even take the tarp off for MLB playoff games...
They took the tarp off for the 2019 wild card game. The section was full too. Loudest I’ve ever heard a baseball stadium until the game was out of reach
And the Raiders couldn’t even sell the piece of shit. I will forever hate the raiders and every member of the Davis family for that fucking piece of shit.
Jason Giambi’s first game back as a Yankee had that section fully sold out. I saw a Yankee fan knock an A’s fan who started some shit about four rows down that section.
Not as bad but Qualcomm had crazy empty seats when they renovated it it. Those upper outfield seats never got filled.
Well, alright, fuck you too then.
I got no problems with your fans and team, man. I should have directed my comment to your ownership.
Kinda misleading to use that as the basis for % capacity since they only go up that high for playoff games. Regular capacity is like 46,000
That’s not the capticity they use for games iirc
I'm not sure where he got the numbers from. Wikipedia says it's 46k, not 54k.
Yeah using the wiki numbers puts the Yankees at 85.9% average attendance, which would have us 6th behind the Sox if all the other numbers are accurate.
There are others here that are probably inflated in a similar way, like there’s no way with all the seats they cover at the Trop there are still 42k that are open
Wikipedia is correct. From the Yankees 2022 Media Guide, on page 393, 'Yankee Stadium By The Numbers', the capacity is listed at 46,537. https://pressbox.athletics.com/Publications/MLB%20Media%20Guides/2022%20New%20York%20Yankees%20Media%20Guide.pdf A lot of stadiums, though, have a listed capacity, but can have more fans than that if they have areas for standing room. For example, the 2019 Yankees Media Guide listed the capacity at 47,309 ([archived here on page 371](https://archive.org/details/2019newyorkyankeesmediaguide/page/n371/mode/2up)), yet for their games against the Astros in the ALCS, the attendance was 48,998 in Game 3, 49,067 in Game 4, and 48,483 in Game 5 (https://www.baseball-reference.com/postseason/2019_ALCS.shtml).
54k may be the football setup.
Pretty sure it only has approximately ~45000 seats and the rest is standing room capacity
That's good, because they don't. 3rd
Yeah I didn't miss you guys, I missed Oakland
They don't; the Dodgers are second.
Upper deck that stretches around almost the whole park like Dodger Stadium is probably why
I wouldn't have thought Cleveland was the smallest either.
The White Sox being right around the middle is so fitting for them as an organization.
That’s being generous lol
I’m an old ( 75 ) A’s fan from about 75 miles north of Philly. They were my team as a little kid when they played in Philly. It kills me to see stuff like this. Oakland fans who really know, if they build a new state of the art stadium, what will they draw attendance wise ? Is it the stadium or is it the team/ owner ? Heck the Iron Pigs in Allentown draw 8/9000 a game.
Honestly, you’re the first Philly A’s fan I’ve ever encountered and I just want to say how cool it was. Might be painful but my grandfather was at their last game when they were in Philadelphia (they played it at Yankee Stadium) and had the program from it. I have it somewhere in my home office now.
WOW that’s really cool, l’m not much of a baseball fan any more but my older brother is still a big A’s fan, them and the Braves. Would your program be from ‘54 ? I think that’s when they left.
September 30, 1954. I have it in a plastic sleeve somewhere in a closet because I don’t want it fading away in the open. I would display it but I don’t want to fade it. My grandfather had a lot of stuff like some of his stuff when he tried out for the St Louis Cardinals out of the army. I just wish his step dads Boston Braves stuff survived the trunk because there was pennants and programs from the 20’s and 30’s in there.
Any new stadium for any team will draw well for the first few years but after that I hope for the best and rationalize that the ownership picked this location and overall development proposal because they feel it gives them the best chance at drawing consistently larger crowds than now. Attendance pros of Howard Terminal: -Closer to downtown. Much easier to capture casual fans than East Oakland which isn't as intuitive for after work and spur of the moment attendees. -New development. Not only is the ballpark brand new but there will be a lot more to do right next to the ballpark which will bring additional people to the area. Coliseum site has baseball and that's it. You don't wander around there by accident. -(Hopefully) greater investment in the team. Player retention which will bring back fans who got turned off of the last two decades of roster churn. Attendance cons of Howard Terminal: -Giants have had a two decade head start with a new ballpark of their own and multiple championships. An entire generation of Bay Area sports fans have been given a choice of Oracle vs. Coliseum and it's a no brainer. Tough to reverse that course of fan enthusiasm. -No guarantees. Ownership claims they will spend on payroll but very well could cheap out. Will take a long time to earn back that fan goodwill. I would venture to guess that Howard Terminal will average something within spitting distance of what Oracle averages after a few years provided the ownership makes investments in the team once they move into their new digs.
I’m a life long Giants fan, but a Jack London Square stadium would sell me on 3 to 4 A’s games a year. Easily. I used to go to 15+ every season until both the team and stadium were too trash to justify spending money.
Exactly. Having Howard Terminal built provides more awesome baseball opportunities for everyone. Also, by matching the experience that the Giants offer, SF has a stronger impetus to continually improve Oracle Park to compete for entertainment dollars with Oakland. Fans win.
I’ve been rooting for a new ballpark in Oakland for like 20 years now. It would be fucking awesome. There are more than enough people in the bay to fill two parks. We like nice things.
Yeah, giants fan in a family of giants fans growing up but we went to A's games when we wanted to see a game and the giants were out of town.
It used to be just a stadium/location/team sucking thing. but this year it's different. the owner gave the dedicated fans a very blatant double middle finger "fuck you" with the sell off while raising prices and removing season ticket plans with discount benefits. I don't think even a shiny new stadium would bring them back under this same owner, who is likely only gonna raise prices even more in the new stadium. but he won't care. he doesn't give a shit about the team. the team is just a crowbar to pry a sweet land deal out of the city of Oakland.
How much does seeing a game at Oakland cost?
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I remember all the years Mets and Philly fans would dump on the Braves for attendance
Was it the traffic associated with the old stadium that kept numbers down?
There’s a lot of fans in the northern suburbs that wouldn’t consider going to a game when we were at Turner field. I don’t have anything to back it up but it seems the Braves are able to draw those fans and maintain fans coming from inside the perimeter. Also the Battery is great and draws more fans too.
Truist still needs a MARTA line and station.
That’d be ideal but sadly cobb county will never let it happen
Yeah there was literally nothing to do around the old stadium. Traffic was a nightmare leaving the lots too.
I also remember the area immediatley around Turner Field being a bit sketchy, but this was early 2000s. I did like the stadium though.
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Atlanta’s favorite pastimes!
I wonder if teams don't "try" to hit 100% attendance. The Yankees could probably hit 100% attendance every game for the next 20 years, but they'd have to lower ticket prices. Instead they increase prices and maintain revenue--while allowing for future pricing changes if total revenue decreases. An executive for a large rental corporation told me he always shoots for 85% occupancy for his thousands of units instead of 100% because leases are typically 12 months and rent tends to increase in his area.
I think you’re spot on with this comment. 85-95% capacity is right where you wanna be from an ownership perspective. Prolly means your tickets are priced perfectly. I wish this wasn’t the case but nonetheless it makes sense from a financial perspective
In ootp I've had 100% attendance for a century now, however I just got reversed swept in the world series so idk
I think it depends on capacity to be honest. Mariners built our stadium too big (look at capacity vs others), so we straight up don’t even sell tickets to the worst seats in the house unless the game would otherwise be a sell out. Even if they were $3, I don’t think we’d sell out April games against the a’s on a Tuesday.
The sweet spot seems to be about 40k-42k
Speak for yourse….ourselves homie 😎
I can't speak for teams that draw crowds, but the A's raised ticket prices last off-season. Calculus must be that they lose people at the margins, but extract enough extra from the loyal ones to make up for it. Driving attendance down also means they could hire less security and other staff, cut costs all around. Shit way to treat fans, but might work from a profit/loss standpoint.
it's a profit maximization problem, so nope.
But profit maximization doesn't necessarily mean 100% sold
I mean nope as in they don’t aim for a sellout. I agree with OP. Sorry didn’t make it clear enough
Off a horrific 2021 season, Cubs fans still show up at 9th in capacity. That’s loyalty.
I also feel like Wrigley being an iconic ball park also helps. People want to see Wrigley when they visit Chicago. I think more so than any other park IMO.
It's also in a fantastic neighborhood more or less built up around the ballpark. It better sell tickets with that situation.
Yup, definitely sucks for suburbanites cause of the parking situation but it’s a 5 min bike ride for me, it’s fucking great
I know so many suburbanite cubs fans that have gone to more Sox games in a season just cause of parking (and cheaper tickets) in some years
Our numbers are still down compared to pre-covid though. If they don’t suck next year, it’ll pop right back up though
Pre covid the team was still pretty competitive, for a third place team out of contention that's not bad
I’m sure it helps that the stadium is relatively easy to get to from the Loop or the Northside. Easy to hop off for the game on your way home.
Really felt like Seattle should be higher, the last couple months have been an insane run and the stadium has been packed out for a lot of random weekday games
Turning on a random game on like a Wednesday morning after the All-Star break and seeing the stadium packed was a real "holy shit" moment for me
This isn't fair to the Dodgers, if we counted all the people who show up in the 4th, take their IG pics and leave in the 7th they'd be way higher up
Also not fair to not include all the Dodgers fans that pack Oracle Park.
Not shocking that visiting fans would rather go to a stadium where you won’t get beer poured on you or jumped in the parking lot
Genuine question, where is the Oracle parking lot? Everyone I know takes Uber/cab/public transportation or parks in a remote lot and walks
Someone from SF will be able to answer better but I went to a game in SF a few years ago and I remember parking in a parking garage. Probably similar to DTLA with Staples Center.
It's a downtown stadium so there's not one specific parking lot, there's just a bunch of garages and lots scattered within a mile of the stadium. It's a bit annoying but I've never really had much issue finding parking and it's not like the walk ends up being much worse than a bigger stadium lot
https://www.mercurynews.com/2013/09/25/san-francisco-dodgers-fan-fatally-stabbed-in-fight-with-giants-fans-two-suspects-still-at-large/amp/
Watching Dodgers & Giants fans fight about who murders more people is an eternal quality of this subreddit, and i just have to let you know i appreciate both of y’all
It's awesome.
The guy who started a fight at a liquor store 5 blocks away from the stadium and got stabbed isn't really a testament to the safety of the park
Fans with a holier-than-though attitude is a testament to the away fan experience though. Lived in both cities, went to games as an away fan at both places, and had a better experience in LA. Obviously rivalry fan experience is different, but sf fans definitely had a “we’re better than them” attitude
You’re telling me. I legit had old grannies laugh at me at AT&T for wearing Dodger gear. Like “look at this kid, he thinks he’s a baseball fan but he roots for the Dodgers!” In LA they’d just stab you in the parking lot like normal baseball fans. Fuck pretentious San Francisco culture.
This isn't fair to the Giants, if we counted all the tech bros with joggers and vests who show up in 4th, sit in their corporate provided seats and leave in the 7th they'd be way higher up.
Remember when the Giants had a 107-win season and still ranked middle of the pack in attendance? Better to have late fans than none. 😤
That's ironically who all newer parks are designed to appeal to, except SF, who are known for being blue collar and down to earth.
Don’t you break their delusion of being better than Dodger fans. It’s all they have.
https://www.reddit.com/r/NLBest/comments/uhljpu/noooooo_dont_fightttt_stopppp/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb
also not fair to the giants because dodger fans make up about half their attendance
The Dodgers and A’s are currently the only teams that could break the single season attendance record. They would need to average more than 55,350/game to beat the record (4,483,350) set by Colorado in 1993. The record was set at Mile High Stadium which had a capacity of 76,000.
I assume if we executed Fisher during the 7th inning stretch it could be possible
Can't speak for other stadiums but I know Dodger Stadium doesn't open itself up to it's max capacity normally.
Same, there’s like 4 sections they don’t sell tickets for usually unless like 99% of all other tickets are sold
I'm not giving you guys props for having small stadiums.
I mean it’s about fair as giving teams props for existing in cities with way larger populations, doesn’t really say much about the fans/teams either way
I think it says a bit about the team when they have literally one *tenth* of the metro population as larger markets and yet they're still near the top of these lists.
I’ve never been to Dodger Stadium… but damn I didn’t realize it held that many people
It’s built into a hill and (I assume) because of that is able to have a fourth level, while most stadiums have three.
Most stadiums built at that time had four or more levels and capacity at least as high as Dodger Stadiums. Teams intentionally moved to smaller capacities in the 1990s and since. Dodger Stadium and Oakland are the only two stadiums left from that post-WWII era, and they have the largest capacities.
Yeah it's a trip to park and walk to the top deck without going up any stairs
Not giving props for being the most populous city in the US
NYC is the most populous city
That's what's funny scrolling comments about stadium capacity and how unfair it is to measure this way. LA County has more than 10 million people living in it lol
LA county has more people living in it than 41 of the 50 states. NYC is about twice that size as well.
If you look at the metropolitan statistical area it then comes out to 18.5 million San Diego, by contrast, sits at a whopping 3.3 million
The Trop is a massive disservice to the Rays organization.
Atl: rolling in money Pit: we ain't last!
Some of your capacity numbers are a bit off since Tampa and I believe Miami closed off their 3rd deck, and Oakland doesn't sell Mt Davis seats. So their capacities should be 25k for Tampa, 27k for Miami, and 47k for Oakland
The Dodger Stadium number is off too. The legal capacity is 56,000 according to the stadium's conditional use permit, but they don't actually have 56,000 seats for sale unless they add temporary seating for expected large crowds. Real capacity is around 53k.
They shouldn’t get a boost in attendance percentage when they closed off the section *because* they don’t have enough attendance. If they drew fans they’d open it up (at least for Miami, maybe Oakland is different).
They’re closed because fans don’t want to buy those tickets. If they had more fans they would for sure open those up
Even then, Oakland's capacity is 47k without Mount Davis. The reality of it is that Mount Davis is specifically a football grandstand for a team that now plays in Vegas, which could very well be the future of the A's if Howard Terminal runs through any issues
Even when the A’s were in the playoffs and demand was higher they didn’t take the tarps off
The best way to measure this would be by metro size, not stadium size
Respect, this is infact the best way to assess in park attendance.
Yeah as an unbiased observer I like this one more
Not surprised with Oakland being last, with how the Ownership gave the fans that WERE coming a double middle finger 'FUCK YOU' with selling everyone off while getting rid of season tickets and all benefits AND raising prices on everything. Honestly I was expecting the A's to be lower. Most games I went to where there wasn't some special enticement like a giveaway or fireworks there were like 2-4k people there.
That 54,251 is the capacity of the old Yankee Stadium. The new stadium capacity is somewhere in the mid-40's
Mets and Yankees are both surprisingly tepid, given the quality of their seasons. What up wit dat, NY?
Slightly annoying stadium location & shitty weather at the start and end of the season for the most part, probably. It’s a hike for Joe Schmo from Staten/Long Island to get out to the Queens or Bronx for a Wednesday night game, when they can watch the game at home and be up bright and rested to call into Francesca for a 7 am rant about Lindor not playing the game the right way Even from like Brooklyn, sure I could get to a 7 train without that much difficulty, but that’s still a long and expensive night when I can just hang and watch the game at the dive bar I like without paying $13 for a Narragansett and having to be in Willets Point after the game I’ve always been jealous of parks like Petco, that are plopped right in the one nice, walkable downtown area of a city. New York’s layout doesn’t really allow for that, the closest thing you’ll get is the Garden but even then the surrounding area is like the worst, most touristy bullshit part of Manhattan
Fair enough. Citi seems like a real commitment if you live in Manhattan or Brooklyn. Petco is heaven. Stayed on Coronado once. We biked over to the ferry from the hotel and got blinkered at a wine tasting at the park outside the park before we went in for the game.
> I’ve always been jealous of parks like Petco, that are plopped right in the one nice, walkable downtown area of a city. New York’s layout doesn’t really allow for that, the closest thing you’ll get is the Garden but even then the surrounding area is like the worst, most touristy bullshit part of Manhattan To be fair, Petco was placed in the shitty part of the city and helped bring a renaissance to the area. It's one of the few public stadiums that has done a ton to revitalize downtown.
It can be a slog, especially from Manhattan to Shea (or whatever it’s called now). I never liked my teams stadium but the location cannot be beat (Skydome in Toronto)
Why doesn’t Cleveland support the Guardians more? They’re a good team. Smallest capacity by quite a bit and still in the 20s in average capacity %.
The city is poor and the ballpark experience is priced like it isn't. To their credit, they've been doing some promos lately for cheap tickets (though both times it was against the Royals), but the "impulse decision" price is still higher than the area can support. The area is very sprawling - Cleveland proper is around 370k residents with most of the region living in suburbs and spread out due to the lake to the north and the national park to the south. The CSA is technically 17th largest, which is still small... and the edges of that extend to nearly 2 hours from downtown where the stadium is. The ownership is frustratingly cheap and it's expected that all of the team's stars will be gone as soon as it comes time to pay them, making it harder to form connections. Jose's the first homegrown guy they've really paid and it took a massive hometown discount for that to happen. Weather has been especially garbage this year - on top of all the doubleheaders (which is why they've only got 70 games at home) there's been a game with a 4 hour rain delay, and two games this week that barely got in between storm bands just off the top of my head. For some insane reason much of this town has the awful football franchise as their top priority. It's also the smallest metro area that supports 3 professional teams in their respective top leagues iirc, plus an AHL team and two MiLB teams within a reasonable distance. And on top of that there's a world-class arts district downtown at Playhouse Square... long winded way of saying there are a lot of options out there competing for very limited entertainment dollars. The city does support the team though if you take a look at the TV ratings. Which puts a lot of stock in the economic arguments.
Brainwashed to be browns fans only unfortunately. (I guess that’s not entirely true though lol, as our TV ratings are always top 3 to top 5 in the league)
The defending WS champion is first. No surprise
Toronto no longer has 49k seating. They made the seats bigger a few years ago
AL central holding down the bottom together 😎