Why are the Orioles games not sold out right now?

[FanSince88]

I'm not concerned about the DC fanbase. Quite frankly, though I have a few good friends living there and my wife loves the free museums, I'm not a huge fan of the city of DC and am kind of glad they got a team of their own to keep them out of our backyard.

Who needs more DC big shots buying up all the good seats? We don't need them for football, why bother with them for baseball? I just wish the Baltimore media returned the favor and gave the Nats a media blackout too. Being from PA, I'd rather go see a Pirates or Phillies game than a Nats game. Besides, unless I'm taking the MARC, I'd probably make better time getting to Pitt or Philly and back compared to DC traffic. You might think I'm joking, but I'm not. There is an exact replica of 495 in hell.

Plus, there's less risk of seeing all the crooked DC politicians at Orioles games now.

[OFFNY]

I remember the Senators all too well. My High School had better attendance that several Senators games I attended at DC Stadium in the '60's. There was only one post-war season (1969) that there was a Senators team remotely as good as this year's Nationals team. Post-war as in post WWII. I don't think there's any historical basis to project the impact on attendance when both Baltimore and Washington DC are fielding competitive baseball teams in a sustained way, although I look forward to the day that question is answered.

I do, too (assuming that WE keep winning.)

[Going Underground]

Attendance tonight was 10,995. I was there... die-hards and White Sox fans. An incredible game. Very fun.

Alot of White Sox fans. I don't lnow if you get all the fans the O's have lost over the years. You hope they do,otherwise Baltimore becomes a problem like Oakland and Tampa.They will have great crowds for the Yankee games but the Tampa games will not draw 20,000 a game. The Yankee fans bought up alot of the tickets for the weekend games. You can't have a stadium which draws for the Yankees,Red Sox and Phillies when over half the stadium is rooting for the other team.

[Ruzious]

I think a lot of fans are like me - thinking there's no way this team is going to keep this up, and there's going to be free fall. There's no way a team with the 3rd or 4th worst run differential in the AL is going to keep winning. Over 162 games, the odds are overwhelming they're going to crash, and I don't want to see the inevitable crash. Then again...they keep hanging in there - with McLouth - a minor leaguer most of the year - batting 3rd - and depending on Lou Freaking Ford. It defies logic. As soon as we believe, then the crash will come, so we choose not to believe - in order to keep their chances alive.

[Orioles0615]

I live in Northern VA and I really don't hear a lot of Nats talk. When I do hear sports talk its about the redskins. I see more redsox and yankee decals on cars then I do Orioles and Nats decals.

I personal think there should be no excuse why Camden Yards should not be at least 3/4 of the way full. You can complain about school starting and the economy all you want, yet school has started all over the country for the most part and the economy is bad just about everywhere.

[glenn__davis]

I don't agree with this one bit. For one, the PSL + Ravens Season Tickets are ridiculously expensive. You can get O's season tickets for fractions of the price of the the PSL/RST.

Sure, and because Ravens tickets are so expensive, some fans therefore choose to go to Ravens games and thus can't afford to go to the Orioles games.

Like yourself, Frobby and others, I still think the losing is the main reason for the drop of attendance, but I have zero doubt that the Ravens have cut into the market some. How significantly, there's probably no way to know.

Ultimately, I don't very much care about the attendance at this point. However, I am concerned that if do happen to make the playoffs and are in position to host a game, that it won't sell out. And that would be embarrassing.

[Bosibus]

It seems to me that a large part of the attendance, espcially on the weekends, is the 20-35 year old age group. People going as more of a social function rather than a baseball game which has really been the case for the last 10+ years. I think as the season gets closer to the end and the Orioles stay in the hunt, they are going to start to draw more and more. If they are still in it on Sept 6th, which I think is already close to sold out and play a good game and win, that homestand could be huge numbers against the Yankess and Rays.

[howboutthoseos]

I'm not concerned about the DC fanbase. Quite frankly, though I have a few good friends living there and my wife loves the free museums, I'm not a huge fan of the city of DC and am kind of glad they got a team of their own to keep them out of our backyard.

Who needs more DC big shots buying up all the good seats? We don't need them for football, why bother with them for baseball? I just wish the Baltimore media returned the favor and gave the Nats a media blackout too. Being from PA, I'd rather go see a Pirates or Phillies game than a Nats game. Besides, unless I'm taking the MARC, I'd probably make better time getting to Pitt or Philly and back compared to DC traffic. You might think I'm joking, but I'm not. There is an exact replica of 495 in hell.

Plus, there's less risk of seeing all the crooked DC politicians at Orioles games now.

This is a bit too simplistic in my view. It's not the K Street crowd and politicians that constituted the "DC fanbase." Undoubtedly these people went to O's games because they were cache in the 90s, people wanted to see the stadium, see Cal, get wined and dined by lobbyists, etc., and now they do that at Nats' games. Fine. They were never really fans -- they were just there for the event.

The "DC fanbase," however, is not these people. It's people like me who grew up in Montgomery County (or others in PG, Fairfax, Loudon, etc.) who rooted for the O's as passionately as kids as anyone from the Baltimore area. They were my first love, I still cry when I watch 2131, I've watched the Boston "Level 5 epic collapse" Youtube video 100 times, I could barely breathe in the 9th inning last night, etc. In other words, I'm indistinguishable from an Orioles fan whose parents happened to reside closer to Baltimore, and O's fans from Baltimore (or PA) ought not to decry people like me (I don't think that's what you were meaning to do) -- after all, a house divided against itself cannot stand. Unfortunately, as the years pass, there are a lot fewer "me"s around. Young fans grow up rooting for the nats. People who never really cared switched over to the Nats. Traffic from DC to Baltimore is a lot worse than it used to be. Gas is more expensive, etc.

All this to say -- I think you should be more concerned about the "DC fanbase" than you are. it has nothing to do with 495, which is hell. It has nothing to do with crooked politicians. It's real people who grow up in the DC area who are now either alienated from the O's or who growing up rooting for a different team. That is hurting our numbers significantly.

[Ruzious]

There's a price to pay for 15 years of stinking - there's no way around it.

Btw, until a month ago, I was working on K St in NW DC. I have no idea what the "K Street crowd" means.

[OFFNY]

This is a bit too simplistic in my view. It's not the K Street crowd and politicians that constituted the "DC fanbase." Undoubtedly these people went to O's games because they were cache in the 90s, people wanted to see the stadium, see Cal, get wined and dined by lobbyists, etc., and now they do that at Nats' games. Fine. They were never really fans -- they were just there for the event.

The "DC fanbase," however, is not these people. It's people like me who grew up in Montgomery County (or others in PG, Fairfax, Loudon, etc.) who rooted for the O's as passionately as kids as anyone from the Baltimore area. They were my first love, I still cry when I watch 2131, I've watched the Boston "Level 5 epic collapse" Youtube video 100 times, I could barely breathe in the 9th inning last night, etc. In other words, I'm indistinguishable from an Orioles fan whose parents happened to reside closer to Baltimore, and O's fans from Baltimore (or PA) ought not to decry people like me (I don't think that's what you were meaning to do) -- after all, a house divided against itself cannot stand. Unfortunately, as the years pass, there are a lot fewer "me"s around. Young fans grow up rooting for the nats. People who never really cared switched over to the Nats. Traffic from DC to Baltimore is a lot worse than it used to be. Gas is more expensive, etc.

All this to say -- I think you should be more concerned about the "DC fanbase" than you are. it has nothing to do with 495, which is hell. It has nothing to do with crooked politicians. It's real people who grow up in the DC area who are now either alienated from the O's or who growing up rooting for a different team. That is hurting our numbers significantly.

Very good post. Very thorough in regard to your own personal experience as well as your projection of the possibilities of the future. Thanks.

[NewMarketSean]

I always thought that once the Orioles were in a pennant race, that the stadium would be 30,000+ plus every night.

Then I saw there were just 10K there last night.

I couldn't have been more wrong but I have gone to more games this year than probably ever since 1996. Friends of mine who swore off the O's are back on the bandwagon. The city is excited about the Orioles again but it is not translating to attendance....yet. Maybe September will change that.

Going tonight with 7 co-workers. We rented a limo and get to push off at 4 p.m. I am stoked.

[howboutthoseos]

There's a price to pay for 15 years of stinking - there's no way around it.

Btw, until a month ago, I was working on K St in NW DC. I have no idea what the "K Street crowd" means.

I was just using that as shorthand for lobbyists who went to O's games w/ clients as opposed to as fans (just a clumsy shorthand). Sorry if I offended!

[barnanimal]

I inquired on the Orioles' website a week ago about purchasing season tickets for next year. I haven't gotten a response.

I know they don't go on sale until later, but you'd think they would at least touch base with someone who is interested.

[TonySoprano]

Also, it took a decade of losing for attendance to dwindle below that 2 million mark, so the conclusion that I draw from that is that the Oriole fans hung on for a long time and were loyal in spite of the losing, not just that the Orioles were losing and we sucked, and the attendance in recent years has sucked.

What you should take from that chart is the 2 million mark represents a 47% decrease from the last winning team. I think you have the definitions of "dramatic" and "gradual" confused. Losing nearly half your fan base in a decade of consecutive losing seasons could be considered "dramatic."

It's obvious that Ripken kept the fans in the stands. The first year he was gone, so were 400,000 ticket sales. However, he was not enough as sales in his last season were down 16% from four years earlier.

This whole discussion of perception reminds me of a story. In the early 80s, many years before he became Governor, Parris Glendening taught "Government and Politics 101" at the University of Maryland. I sat in on a couple of his lectures. After the 1980 general election, Glendening announced to the class, "I can't believe Reagan won. I don't know anyone that voted for him."

History shows that Reagan won in a huge landslide in 1980, and an even bigger landslide in four years. I tell this story not to go off on a politics tangent; we don't need that. Rather, the point is that he kept himself in a limited circle of people who thought the same as himself, and wasn't in tune with the population at large.

[OFFNY]

What you should take from that chart is the 2 million mark represents a 47% decrease from the last winning team. I think you have the definitions of "dramatic" and "gradual" confused. Losing nearly half your fan base in a decade of consecutive losing seasons could be considered "dramatic."

It's obvious that Ripken kept the fans in the stands. The first year he was gone, so were 400,000 ticket sales. However, he was not enough as sales in his last season were down 16% from four years earlier.

This whole discussion of perception reminds me of a story. In the early 80s, many years before he became Governor, Parris Glendening taught "Government and Politics 101" at the University of Maryland. I sat in on a couple of his lectures. After the 1980 general election, Glendening announced to the class, "I can't believe Reagan won. I don't know anyone that voted for him."

History shows that Reagan won in a huge landslide in 1980, and an even bigger landslide in four years. I tell this story not to go off on a politics tangent; we don't need that. Rather, the point is that he kept himself in a limited circle of people who thought the same as himself, and wasn't in tune with the population at large.

I don't think that I have them confused. In the first 8 years of losing, the attendance was still at 2.62 Million in 2005. It took a sharp plunge the next season to 2.152 Million, but that's still 8 consecutive years of losing, and we were still 5th out of 14 teams in the American League that season. I would say that that is gradual. And as I stated, in 2006 we took a sharp plunge to 2.15 Million, so I would say that that is dramatic. So essentially, since our last winning season in 1997 when the attendance was at 3.7 Million, we have had two runs of 8 years and 6 years respectively of gradually declining attendance (1998-2005, and 2006-2011), with one steep, dramatic plunge (2005-2006) between the 2 said runs.

In the first 8 year-run, we were no lower than 5th in the A.L. in attendance, and in the second 6-year run, we finished in either 9th, 10th, or 11th in each of those seasons.

.