Just got the press release saying that Major League Baseball finished the 2014 regular season with 73,739,622 in attendance marking the seventh highest total of all-time.
Obviously “seventh best” is a tad misleading in that baseball has only had 30 teams for the past 16 years. Also, before 1993 the National League used to count actual butts in seats, not tickets sold, so there are some historical apples and oranges at play here. But it’s still pretty good attendance all the same. In all, baseball’s top ten season of attendance of all time have come in the past year.
The last weekend of the season featured the second best overall attendance of the year. Several games with playoff implications thanks to the addition of the second wild card can be thanked for that. As well as a lot of nice weather. Overall five teams topped the three million mark (New York Yankees; Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim; St. Louis Cardinals; San Francisco Giants; and Los Angeles Dodgers). Twelve drew over 2.5 million. The Pirates set a single season attendance record of 2.44 million. The Giants have 332 straight sellouts.
We can quibble with the numbers and the trends. But parks are generally more full then they used to be, even if they’re just a tad off peak. As far as the gate goes, the game is pretty healthy.
