The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of MLB's 2013 Attendance

The 2013 regular season has ended, and with it Major League Baseball saw paid attendance of 74,026,895, or an average of 30,514 over 2,426 games. The season will end down 1.06 percent from 2012 when the league saw total of 74,859,268. “Paid attendance” represents the number of tickets sold, not the total number of actual people that came to a given game.

The season ends as the sixth-highest all-time and the league was quick to point out that all of the top 10 seasons in attendance have been over the last decade. The Los Angeles Dodgers led the majors with 3,743,527, the first time they led the league since 2009. At the other end of the spectrum, despite being consistently competitive on the field, the Tampa Bay Rays ended the season with a total of just 1,510,300 or an average of 18,646 per game. They were the only club to see average attendance below 19,000 per game.

This was the first year of the Astros moving into the AL, and with it, interleague play was sprinkled from the start to end of the season. In years past, the league liked to tout how popular interleague was compared to intraleague, but that was misleading as the games were played in two small pockets in the summer, thus skewing the results. Over 295 games, interleague drew an average of 31,102 per game compared to 30,406, a difference of 696 per game.

Eight Clubs surpassed the three-million mark (Dodgers, Cardinals, Giants, Yankees, Rangers, Tigers, Angels, and Phillies) , while 15 eclipsed the 2.5-million mark (up from 13 in 2012). The Dodgers, who saw the second-highest increase in paid attendance behind only the Blue Jays saw 34 of the 36 highest-attended games. With Dodgers Stadium’s cavernous seating capacity, only the Braves on Opening Day against the Phillies (51,456), and against the Cardinals on Friday July 26 (50,124) saw games over the 50,000 mark.

The league was hit with exceptionally poor weather this year, and while not the worst ever, it did impact attendance. The league would have seen attendance nearly flat if the Weather Gods would have treated the season better, and one club would not have seen a historic drop.

The Miami Marlins saw the third largest attendance drop (31 percent) in the second year of a new ballpark behind only the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in 1998 to 1999 and the Texas Rangers from 1994 to 1995. This happened after the Marlins had the worst attendance for a new ballpark since 2000. Even with the new ballpark, the fire sale by owner Jeffrey Loria to the Toronto Blue Jays caused fans to turn their back on the club in just their second season in Miami. The Marlins had the third lowest attendance by average for all of baseball in 2013. Only the Indians and Rays had lower average attendance. The club saw a 29 percent drop in attendance going from an average of 27,401 to 19,584 in 2013, or a difference of 633,122 total fans. The drop had an adverse effect on total league attendance.

Below is a table showing  all the new ballpark openings since 1991 with inaugural and second year attendance

Other points of interest…

• The San Francisco Giants ended the 2013 season with 246 consecutive sell-outs, dating back to October 1, 2010, for the longest active streak in the Majors.
• The Texas Rangers posted back-to-back seasons of at least three million for the first time in Club history; the past two seasons have been the most well-attended in franchise history.
• The Cincinnati Reds drew 2,492,059, establishing a new record at Great American Ball Park and surpassing the previous mark of 2,355,259 in the ballpark’s inaugural season in 2003.  In addition, it was the Club’s highest overall attendance since 2000 and the second-highest since 1978.
• The Pittsburgh Pirates drew 2,256,862, marking the most since PNC Park’s inaugural season in 2001 (2,436,139), and second-largest total in franchise history.
• During 2013 the Pirates sold out a PNC Park single-season record of 23 games, surpassing the 2001 mark of 19 and the 17 sellouts in 2012.
• The Baltimore Orioles drew 2,357,561, their highest attendance since 2005.
• The Toronto Blue Jays drew 2,536,562, their highest attendance since 1997 and saw the league’s largest increase per game (5,394per game over 2012).
• The Washington Nationals drew 2,652,422, their highest at Nationals Park and the most since their inaugural season in D.C. in 2005.
• The New York Yankees led the American League with 3,279,589, marking the 11th straight season they have drawn the most among A.L. Clubs.
• While the Yankees led the American League in attendance, it wasn’t all good news. They saw a sizable drop of 262,817 less in paid attendance over 2012 for the Bronx Bombers.
• The Kansas City Royals posted their second-highest attendance (1,750,754) since 1993.
• There were 9 games that had attendance under 10,000 with the Cleveland Indians hosting four of them, the Seattle Mariners with two, and the Pittsburgh Pirates and Tampa Bay Rays each having one game below the lowly figure.
• The Cleveland Indians had the lowest-attended game of the season with just 9,143 in paid attendance on April 16th against the Red Sox.
• In a case of the ironic, the postseason does not always add up to great attendance. The AL Wild Card game pits the worst, and second worst attended teams in all of Major League Baseball with the Rays (ranked 30th at an average of 18,646) and the Indians (ranked 29th at an average of 19,419) against each other.
• The Mets’ woes at the gate continue. While there were initial glimmers of hope, the club finished down 107,146 in paid attendance over last season, 21st in the league.
• While the Mariners continue their losing ways, and fired manager Eric Wedge, they actually saw attendance go up in 2013 (39,626 more total fans than in 2012).
• The Miami Marlins failed to sellout one game this season.
• The Phillies mired in rebuilding saw a 16 percent drop (6,831 less per game)  in attendance from 2012 to 2013. Only the Marlins saw a larger attendance drop.

Follow Maury Brown on Twitter @BizballMaury