Brown: MLB 2014 attendance winners and losers
From Maury Brown at Forbes.com on September 29, 2014:
Major League Baseball’s regular season ended on Sunday and with it, paid attendance for the league (the number of tickets sold) came in at 73,739,622 with average attendance per game at 30,346. Year-over-year attendance was ostensibly flat, down 0.3 percent from the 2013 season when average attendance was 30,442. Overall, it ranks as the seventh most-attended season ever behind 2007 (79,503,175), 2008 (78,588,004), 2006 (76,042,787), 2012 (74,859,268), 2005 (74,702,034), and 2013 (74,026,895). This season marks the second consecutive year that attendance has dropped, albeit only slightly since then. Total attendance has dropped 1.5 percent since 2012.
Five clubs drew over 3 million in attendance in 2014. The Dodgers led the league with a total of 3,782,337, followed by the Cardinals (3,540,649), Yankees (3,401,624), Giants (3,368,697), and Angels (3,095,935). Showing that performance in the season prior can override poor performance this year, the 2013 Red Sox who were World Series Champions in 2013 but finished with an anemic 71-91 record—last in the AL East this season—just missed drawing 3 million fans with 2,956,089 in paid attendance. Back to the Dodgers, they surpassed the 3.7-million mark for the sixth time in club history, and it was their second highest total overall, behind 2007 (3,857,036).
Nearly half the league (12) drew over 2.5 million in attendance. Along with those over the 3 million mark, the aforementioned Red Sox, Tigers, Brewers, Rangers, Rockies, Cubs, and Nationals saw robust attendance.
Read the full article here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/maurybrown/2014/09/29/winners-and-losers-mlb-attendance-in-2014-nearly-74-million-through-the-gate/
Originally published: October 1, 2014. Last Updated: October 1, 2014.