Thread: Attendance

Originally Posted by jokin

Originally Posted by adjacent

What bring us to tonight's word:new stadiums. For years we've heard that in order to have good teams, franchises need new stadiums, to increase attendance. Actually, it is all the way around, good teams bring people to stadiums, and justify new facilities. You can have all the flashy new stadium that you want, but if your team is bad, after a couple of years, the stadium is going to be empty. See present Twins, see Gophers football. Vikings, please listen. I only hope that the Twins don't fall in the vicious circle of reducing payroll and poor teams because of reducing attendance, which in turn will reduce the attendance further.

Future Shock

or

Rinse and Repeat (the real Twins mantra)

Case in point regarding "the means to spend" argument which the Twins are in the process of completely blowing up:

The Baltimore Orioles-

on a hot streak,
hottest team in August-playing 16-8 baseball, a .667 clip,
revived from the dead for years on end to competitive,
third best record in the AL,
the best record in one-run games in baseball,
only 3.5 games behind the best team in the league, the Yankees,
playing in one of the best parks in all of baseball- Camden Yards,
playing a first place team in the White Sox- with a Cy Young favorite on the mound, Chris Sale
perfect night for baseball in Baltimore



drew all of 12,841 fans last night.

I realize that Baltimore has become a quick target when people want to talk about how fans stay away despite a beautiful ballpark and, now, a competitive team. However, this week's attendance is not indicative of any such thing. There were actually a couple thousand fewer people at their game on Monday night, I believe, but the low attendance is not really indicative of fan apathy.

The orioles have had over 1.6 million fans in 2012, averaging 25,337 per game. That's not great... 23rd among MLB teams... but then the White Sox, who lead the AL Central are currently ranked 24th, behind Baltimore. Attendance is actually over 15% higher on a per game basis (nearly 3,400 more fans per game) compared to last season.

The unusually low attendance this week is likely due to the week-long construction process of the race course for the Baltimore Grand Prix this weekend. Starting this past Saturday, a lot of the roads adjacent to and around Camden Yards are being closed and re-routed to allow for the contruction of the Grand Prix course through the streets of the Harbor area. A lot of the locals aren't even bothering to try to get to their offices in the area this week because of the traffic and parking restrictions, much less trying to get down to Camden for a ballgame.

Baltimore is indeed a cautionary tale for Twins ownership, indicating that a nice ballpark alone won't put butts in the seats forever. But it is incorrect to use Baltimore as an example of a fanbase that won't come back even for a competitive team. They may not be filling the stadium at this point, but there are a lot of teams (including the Twins) that would love to be seeing a 15% increase in attendance.

Originally Posted by Jim Crikket

Originally Posted by jokin

Originally Posted by adjacent

What bring us to tonight's word:new stadiums. For years we've heard that in order to have good teams, franchises need new stadiums, to increase attendance. Actually, it is all the way around, good teams bring people to stadiums, and justify new facilities. You can have all the flashy new stadium that you want, but if your team is bad, after a couple of years, the stadium is going to be empty. See present Twins, see Gophers football. Vikings, please listen. I only hope that the Twins don't fall in the vicious circle of reducing payroll and poor teams because of reducing attendance, which in turn will reduce the attendance further.

Future Shock

or

Rinse and Repeat (the real Twins mantra)

Case in point regarding "the means to spend" argument which the Twins are in the process of completely blowing up:

The Baltimore Orioles-

on a hot streak,
hottest team in August-playing 16-8 baseball, a .667 clip,
revived from the dead for years on end to competitive,
third best record in the AL,
the best record in one-run games in baseball,
only 3.5 games behind the best team in the league, the Yankees,
playing in one of the best parks in all of baseball- Camden Yards,
playing a first place team in the White Sox- with a Cy Young favorite on the mound, Chris Sale
perfect night for baseball in Baltimore



drew all of 12,841 fans last night.

I realize that Baltimore has become a quick target when people want to talk about how fans stay away despite a beautiful ballpark and, now, a competitive team. However, this week's attendance is not indicative of any such thing. There were actually a couple thousand fewer people at their game on Monday night, I believe, but the low attendance is not really indicative of fan apathy.

The orioles have had over 1.6 million fans in 2012, averaging 25,337 per game. That's not great... 23rd among MLB teams... but then the White Sox, who lead the AL Central are currently ranked 24th, behind Baltimore. Attendance is actually over 15% higher on a per game basis (nearly 3,400 more fans per game) compared to last season.

The unusually low attendance this week is likely due to the week-long construction process of the race course for the Baltimore Grand Prix this weekend. Starting this past Saturday, a lot of the roads adjacent to and around Camden Yards are being closed and re-routed to allow for the contruction of the Grand Prix course through the streets of the Harbor area. A lot of the locals aren't even bothering to try to get to their offices in the area this week because of the traffic and parking restrictions, much less trying to get down to Camden for a ballgame.

Baltimore is indeed a cautionary tale for Twins ownership, indicating that a nice ballpark alone won't put butts in the seats forever. But it is incorrect to use Baltimore as an example of a fanbase that won't come back even for a competitive team. They may not be filling the stadium at this point, but there are a lot of teams (including the Twins) that would love to be seeing a 15% increase in attendance.

History of Baltimore attendance :

2001: 38.8 (000) Rank overall: 5th
2002: 33.1 10th
2003: 30.3 12th
2004: 34.3 12th
2005: 32.4 14th
2006: 26.6 20th
2007: 27.0 23rd
2008: 25.0 24th
2009: 23.5 21st
2010: 21.7 24th
2011: 21.9 26th
2012: average attendance in August in the thick of the race with the hottest team in baseball- 21.5!

Thanks for the info about the Grand Prix situation, but that still leaves them with a poor August attendance result, especially considering they are playing at a .667 clip this month. The White Sox have always been, and will always be, the orphan team in Chicago.

Interestingly, the Twins attendance graph over the same time period is exactly the opposite to the Orioles. If the Twins go through a process similar to the Orioles, expect the serial spiraling down of attendance and payroll to continue for years to come. The Orioles are finally trying hard to take advantage of the Red Sox collapse and avoid losing fans to the Nats, I wish the sense of urgency would be replicated in Minnesota.

Originally Posted by StormJH1

listen to Terry Ryan talk about a "weak FA market for pitching" (which is garbage) and his general philosophy against long-term deals for pitchers...

Just to clarify a bit he actually said that the "elite free agent pitcher market was thin". He said nothing about the overall pitching market. If you take "elite" to mean Hamels/Greinke etc... then yes it is thin.


Another reason for Tampa's attendance struggles could be the housing market. Tampa got absolutely rocked. I have a buddy there who said his house has lost 50% of it's value since he bought it in 2007.

I don't understand why this is one or the other. You need both (winning team and a nice stadium).

I understand that fans are impatient but this team is coming off of a decade of success and at some point every team has to retool. I also don't understand where everyone wants to spend the money. Paying 30+ yr old FA's big bucks typically is a bad idea and there are only a few Willingham type contracts every year. If you think Blackburn, Nishi and Capps are bad contracts then you haven't seen anything yet if the Twins start spending tons of money.

There will probably be an AS game benefit in attendance. Usually to qualify for tickets you need to be at least a partial season ticket holder for 2 seasons. that will help deal with the losing team on the field.