Is baseball losing popularity?

[BadSeed84]

I have MLB Extra innings, so I get to see alot of games

and it seems like alot of stadiums aren't getting many people

Now the marlins, nationals its expected

but theres other teams now, like the white sox, and others

Blue Jays are really looks low, wikipedia says april 19th was their lowest attendance ever.

And theres other teams I just cant think of it off the top of my head

Of course tho I live in philly, so luckily I have a team that sells out pretty much every game. The Phillies have yet to have majpr attendance problems with citizens bank park.

Also I predict the marlins new stadium wont make a difference in attendance

Ok ok for the first year yes, but look at the nationals how quick it took theirs to get low numbers.

[Quillz]

I don't know if baseball is really in decline, but on the other hand, large markets like Philly, New York, Boston and LA pretty much always sell out their home games, while smaller cities like Miami, Kansas City and Pittsburgh don't.

Of course, I do think baseball has lost a lot of luster in recent years with the steroids scandal, the notion that there are really only 5-6 teams that are real title contenders and the issue of a salary cap, so it's really only the big market cities that can field winning teams.

[NJTank]

I can tell you that Mets fans are pissed and not buy tickets, and that is why Citi Field is half empty.

[Brave-Bird 08]

Idk...Braves hype is pretty high right now. I cant tell you how many Braves logos I see through the course of a day just at school.

Plus, Heyward is going to sell a lot of tickets.

Still, attendance is low, but that might have something to do with the economy. Plus, the Braves have never been good at selling weekday games anyways, even against Philly, b/c 1) Atlanta traffic is HELL, 2) Atlanta is a transplant town

but again, I dont think attendance is accurately reflecting it.

Braves hype is higher than ever right now.

[BrianVlietDesign]

I most definitely don't think so. I just think that some of these smaller markets where there may not be as much of a fan base are going to tend to be small due to the economy. But, as soon as some of these clubs start winning, they'll pick up attendance. Plus, you have to also look at the fact that the season has not been going on for very long. Only for about three weeks maybe? As far as minor league ball, the Flying Squirrels in Richmond are close to selling out every game. The home opener itself had a close to 10,000 in attendance. Granted it's a minor league ballpark, but still. I don't think it's losing steam.

[epper]

Toronto has proven in the past it will support a winning team...drew over 4 million fans back in the early 90's and have hovered in the "teens" in overall attendance the last decade. The Jays lack of attendance so far is from a few things:

1. The hockey playoffs. Even though the Leafs are out, the city just has so many hockey fans that would rather go to sports bars to watch NHL games than come out to the Dome.

2. Trading Roy Halladay, who was a demigod around here. Fans and ownership alike know the Jays aren't going to contend this year.

3. Crappy opponents (so far). The Royals and White Sox have never been big draws in Toronto. I know teams like Boston, NY and STL draw no matter the opponent, but here it matters.

As a columnist from one of the Toronto papers (can't remember who) put it, "Baseball is not dead in Toronto...It's just sleeping". I fully expect that when we're back to contending with a core of Lind, Hill, Wells, Snider, Marcum, Romero, Drabek, Wallace, McGowan and D'Arnaud, the fans will return.

[infrared41]

Outside the teams that always draw well (Yankees, Red Sox, Cardinals, LA Teams, Cubs) and the teams that are drawing because they've been winning (Philadelphia), weekday attendance is usually pretty spotty this time of year. The weather isn't all that great and kids are still in school. Add to that the fact that for the cost of going to one or two games you can watch every game on TV. There is also the fact that we now have local cable networks televising 125-150 games a year while ESPN, MLB Network, TBS, and FOX are televising games almost every night of the week. All that TV coverage is going to effect attendance; especially this time of year. Throw in a bad economy and you get a pretty good idea of what's going on.

I'd say you should revisit your question in July.

[DelayedPenalty]

Factor in the economy. How many people are out of work? How many people can't afford to take a day off work to go watch a baseball game on a Tuesday afternoon? Makes sense that attendance would be low for weekday/weeknight games, and higher on weekends.

[infrared41]

Factor in the economy. How many people are out of work? How many people can't afford to take a day off work to go watch a baseball game on a Tuesday afternoon? Makes sense that attendance would be low for weekday/weeknight games, and higher on weekends.

Exactly. Once the weather is nice and school is out, weekday attendance will improve. I'd doubt that we'll see 30,000 on a Tuesday night in Cleveland or KC once all that happens but they'll still do better than they're doing now.

[CC97]

Toronto has proven in the past it will support a winning team...drew over 4 million fans back in the early 90's and have hovered in the "teens" in overall attendance the last decade. The Jays lack of attendance so far is from a few things:

1. The hockey playoffs. Even though the Leafs are out, the city just has so many hockey fans that would rather go to sports bars to watch NHL games than come out to the Dome.

2. Trading Roy Halladay, who was a demigod around here. Fans and ownership alike know the Jays aren't going to contend this year.

3. Crappy opponents (so far). The Royals and White Sox have never been big draws in Toronto. I know teams like Boston, NY and STL draw no matter the opponent, but here it matters.

As a columnist from one of the Toronto papers (can't remember who) put it, "Baseball is not dead in Toronto...It's just sleeping". I fully expect that when we're back to contending with a core of Lind, Hill, Wells, Snider, Marcum, Romero, Drabek, Wallace, McGowan and D'Arnaud, the fans will return.

These are also not record low attendance numbers in Toronto (although they are horrific) - the Jays didn't start reporting more accurate attendance numbers until 2009; back when I worked for the club our pre-game meetings routinely began with "Announced crowd will be around 14,000 but don't expect more than 3,500 in here". Current attendance figures reflect tickets sold; pre-2009 figures reflected tickets distributed, if they wanted to get up to 14,000 for a game they could just hand out 7,000 freebies before first pitch to make the number look better.

[Lee.]

if they wanted to get up to 14,000 for a game they could just hand out 7,000 freebies before first pitch to make the number look better.

If they can do it for the Bills games, they can do it for the Jays.

[CC97]

if they wanted to get up to 14,000 for a game they could just hand out 7,000 freebies before first pitch to make the number look better.

If they can do it for the Bills games, they can do it for the Jays.

As previously mentioned, they did it for the Jays for years prior to the Bills ever coming to Toronto.

I'm still waiting to see one of these supposed piles of Bills freebies they hand out every year.

[Swiss]

Factor in the economy. How many people are out of work? How many people can't afford to take a day off work to go watch a baseball game on a Tuesday afternoon? Makes sense that attendance would be low for weekday/weeknight games, and higher on weekends.

IMO, this opinion is the most accurate answer possible to the topic.

And add it to the fact of the very expensive tickets... folks prefer to save money buying some TV cable baseball pack. So let's measure baseball popularity with the number of those packs sold.

It's not a bad idea comparing the popularity of the other sports checking the quantity of TV cable packs sold.

[oddball]

I agree with a lot of what has been said, economy, weather, kids still in school, but I also ask, which teams are you refering to? When you say attendance is sparce, at which stadiums? A team like Toronto is going to be sparse because they suck and have for a while. The White Sox, they suck now and it's cold, and they tend to come out when the Sox do well, but disuise themselves as empty seats when they don't do well. Then again most cities are that way. Has baseball lost its popularity? Yes, but what year do you want to compare it to? The 50's, 1968, 1977, 1988, 1994, 1998, or last year?

[BadSeed84]

True, I guess it is the reasons you guys said.