I was involved in a debate on another board about attendance that made me do some digging. The link below really might shock some people with attendance figures. My belief that NL attendance has never been better was confirmed, but I was shocked by the numbers for Cincinnati. I can't believe that we are less than 10k off the figures for the BRM era!
http://www.baseball-almanac.com/teams/redsatte.shtml
Thanks for the post. It all depends on how you look at it... glass 1/2 full or glass 1/2 empty? You say only 10k below the BRM era. I say 33% below the BRM era.
There are many other variables involved of course... economy, corporate season ticket purchses, etc, etc.
And one really good baseball team.Originally Posted by RedFanAlways1966
Stands to reason the year the Reds best attendance was likely the best season ever for their franchise, 1976. The bottom line is win and they (the fans) will come. Put a crummy product on the field and they will stay away in droves.
Reds Fan Since 1971
When your best attendance was the year before free agency that says a lot, when you're the last team in MLB to reach a million in attendance that says a lot, the fact is the Reds have only had a couple runs of good attendance numbers, eventually the team loses and the fans stay away in droves matching the ones that showed up when they ruled the world.
The other-other way to look at it is that during an era of consistent growth they've gone from double the league average to 2/3rds the league average.
While the league wide product has become much more popular, the local product has become less popular. But then we didn't need numbers to tell us that.
"Even a bad day at the ballpark beats the snot out of most other good days. I'll take my scorecard and pencil and beer and hot dog and rage at the dips and cheer at the highs, but I'm not ever going to stop loving this game and this team and nobody will ever take that away from me." Roy Tucker October 2010
I just can't buy this statement. No matter what kind of numbers MLB throws at us I just can't buy it. Maybe they should come and look at the local ball fields and realize they are aren't nearly as crowded as they have in the past.
The same could be said about any area that has a team, the metro area has also grown 500K since the 1976 peak attendance so it's not like the people went away.
It was just their interest in Major League Baseball that left the building.
10K is a huge difference - 800 K a season . If the Reds could pull 2.3-2.5M over a 3yr period could allow the team to start locking up key parts of it's young nucleus and add a key part here or there.
We've seen promising young nucleii before and been disappointed. This time around there are no guarantees, but I don't believe I've seen a collection of young talent like this in my 40+ years of following the Reds.
I'm not sure that this is the year the Reds return to the post season, but I believe it has the potential to be very exciting and to re-capture the imagination of some fans who have drifted away.
I've said in the past that I believe the club is reaching a crucial moment. I think there are a lot of pieces in place for some sustained success not seen in decades, but there are a few key pieces needed. How the FO handles things in the next 12 mos or so will be interesting.
I believe that adding a major piece (a TOR to front the young rotation or an impact bat) to the top or middle of the lineup could add as much to re-stirrring fan interest as it would on the field.
I believe that the last work stoppage was taken more personally bu sectors of Reds fandom then some other MLB markets. I have seen some of that changing. I know I'm originally from Ashland, KY and in the BRM days, lots of people I knew in the area would make the 2 1/2-3t hour drive two or three times a season. In the last few years the friends that I've stayed in tocgh with have barely mentioned the Reds. Recently. I've seen that lack of interest starting to change.
If the Reds can put an exciting young product on the field, I think that the Reds could make some decent attendance gains in the Tri-State area (Ashland, Ironton, Huntington-Charleston) alone.
The problem is, everyone else in the division - except PIT - draw that in a bad year. Since ticket prices here are relatively cheap compared to other teams, the Reds have to draw in the high 2Ms to be able to compete.
I agree Chip. Just saying that the Reds have to strive for the 2.5M mark first and then start building. I think 2.5 to 2.8M range is possible, but it's gonna take prolonged success to reach that level.
One of the Reds biggest hurdles to getting to (or above) the 2.5M mark is the early season schedule when the weather is still cold and school keeps families are away.
A contender wouldl go a long way toward keeping averags up in September, but early season games have been an issue, even in a lot of season where the interest level has been fairly high. This can really keep average/total attendance down.
I believe that around 1990 (just guessing on the time period) the league started counting attendance differently. Instead of counting the turnstile, they counted tickets sold, which artificially raised attendance numbers across the board. So these current "official" attendance numbers don't accurately reflect real revenue, since over half a team's revenue comes from parking, food, hats and other stuff bought at the ballpark.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge." -- Albert Einstein
http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-...,3422667.story
National League teams announced an actual turnstile count through 1992, MLB spokesman Rich Levin said. But the National League and American League have since consolidated business operations, and Major League Baseball defines attendance as "tickets sold," not "tickets used."
"It's because of revenue sharing," Levin said. "That's what we use in our official count." (Teams contribute 34% of the revenue they generate, including most ticket and concession revenue, into a pool to be redistributed among teams that generate the fewest dollars.)
The Times no longer routinely includes attendance in sports stories, because of the discrepancies between actual and announced attendance.
So basically you want to maximize tickets uses as a percentage of tickets bought.
Not all teams have parking do they? At least parking they own, I know they don't have it in San Francisco
Hats and other stuff with MLB on it are all shared, not sole ownership of the team, just like the tickets. Food is generally a partnership situation with a service industry giant.
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