Posted by Jeff Lubbers on Monday, April 20, 2009 at 8:15 pm

Attendance at baseball games this year will be under increased scrutiny as teams have spent months worrying how much the economic climate will affect their bottom lines.

After the first two weeks of the season it looks like attendance is in fact down in 2009 (30,298 per game) compared to the average attendance for all of 2008 (32,539 per game), a 6.9% drop. While the numbers for 2009 so far only represent 7.5% of the overall season they begin to tell a story for what we can expect for the rest of the season.

Looking at the raw attendance numbers (and it’s worth pointing out again that, as always, these are tickets sold, not fans in seats, numbers that teams almost always refuse to report) attendance is down 6.9% through 183 games. However, given that not all teams have played the same number of games (the Rockies have only played three home games compared to eleven for the Twins) the attendance figures will fluctuate as the number of home games for all teams even out.

Through games of April 19, the bottom ten attendance teams from 2008 have played an average of 6.5 games in 2009 compared to 5.7 games for the top ten attendance teams from 2008, depressing the overall numbers by a slight margin.

If we attempt to “normalize” the attendance figures they don’t appear quite as bad. For example, the average number of home games per team so far is 6.1. If we were to take the Yankees 2009 average attendance through only 4 games (45,401) and multiply by the 6.1 we get a total Yankee attendance of 276,951. After doing that for every team and dividing by the total number of games so far (183) we get an average attendance of 30,732, which only represents a 5.6% drop compared to the final numbers from 2008.

This correction is actually a bit of an overcorrection, as average attendance for teams with fewer games will be overinflated by Opening Day numbers. In any case three things appear quite likely: 1) overall attendance will continue to be down, 2) teams will refuse to release the actual number of fans in attendance, and 3) Bud Selig will continue to put a rosy glow on whatever attendance figures emerge.

Other Attendance Notes

Playing their second home game of the season on April 7, the Toronto Blue Jays drew a mere 16,790 fans, a 65% drop from the prior day’s Opening Day crowd of 48,027. Not helping that day’s attendance was an alcohol ban imposed because of unruly fan behavior (though the following day’s game with full alcohol service drew even fewer fans). There are currently two more alcohol-free days scheduled in
Toronto in 2009.

Just prior to the beginning of the season much was made of the Tigers’ drop in season ticket sales from 27,000 to 15,000 in 2009. Through five games (all afternoon games including two in midweek that were not Opening Day) Detroit is drawing a respectable 26,849 per game. Through five games in 2008 the team drew 37,393 per game.

The Rays have average 28,986 through 7 home games, good for 14^th in the league, which is likely the first time in franchise history the team is in the top half of any attendance measure. Through 7 games in 2008 the Rays were averaging a mere 15,463 per game.

The news out of Washington continues to go from bad to worse. The worst team in the majors is drawing only 23,348 (through only five games). While that’s lower than last year’s average of 27,163 through five games it is perhaps slightly less embarrassing than the 2008 figure which were for the five games played at Nationals Park. Apparently the honeymoon at the new stadium for the Nationals lasted one game in 2008.