Per Capita Team Attendance

[AZRon]

The number of posts relating to MLB team attendance on my ODP Payroll post See opening ODP post caused me to cogitate on perspectives as to relative and relevant attendance numbers. So, I assembled this chart:

Team	Metropolitan Area 2018 Estimated Population1	2019 Attendance2	Attendance Per Capita	% of Capacity	Mileage to Nearest Different MLB Stadium3
New York (NYY)	19.98 M	3.30 M	0.17	75.2%	9
New York (NYM)	19.98 M	2.44 M	0.12	71.9%	9
Los Angeles (LAA)	13.29 M	3.02 M	0.23	82.7%	31
Los Angeles (LAD)	13.29 M	3.97 M	0.30	87.6%	31
Chicago (CWS)	9.50 M	1.65 M	0.17	50.1%	10
Chicago (CHC)	9.50 M	3.09 M	0.33	91.7%	10
Texas (TEX)	7.54 M	2.13 M	0.28	54.7%	257
Houston (HOU)	7.00 M	2.86 M	0.41	86.0%	257
Washington (WSH)	6.25 M	2.26 M	0.36	67.4%	38
Miami (MIA)	6.20 M	.81 M	0.13	27.3%	266
Philadelphia (PHI)	6.10 M	2.73 M	0.45	77.1%	100
Toronto (TOR)	6.08 M	1.75 M	0.29	43.8%	230
Atlanta (ATL)	5.95 M	2.66 M	0.45	79.7%	449
Boston (BOS)	4.88 M	2.92 M	0.60	95.1%	204
Arizona (ARI)	4.86 M	2.14 M	0.44	54.2%	356
San Francisco (SF)	4.73 M	2.71 M	0.57	79.8%	17
Oakland (OAK)	4.73 M	1.66 M	0.35	43.5%	17
Detroit (DET)	4.33 M	1.50 M	0.35	44.5%	168
Seattle (SEA)	3.94 M	1.79 M	0.45	46.6%	807
Minnesota (MIN)	3.63 M	2.29 M	0.63	73.3%	334
San Diego (SD)	3.34 M	2.40 M	0.72	69.6%	95
Tampa Bay (TB)	3.14 M	1.18 M	0.38	58.2%	266
Colorado (COL)	2.93 M	2.99 M	1.02	74.7%	609
St. Louis (STL)	2.81 M	3.48 M	1.24	91.7%	242
Baltimore (BAL)	2.80 M	1.31 M	0.47	35.1%	38
Pittsburgh (PIT)	2.32 M	1.49 M	0.64	48.0%	134
Cincinnati (CIN)	2.19 M	1.81 M	0.83	52.8%	250
Kansas City (KC)	2.14 M	1.48 M	0.69	48.2%	242
Cleveland (CLE)	2.06 M	1.74 M	0.85	61.3%	134
Milwaukee (MIL)	1.58 M	2.92 M	1.85	86.1%	91

¹ https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-kits/2019/metro-county-pop-estimates.html
https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/20402/toronto/population

² https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/MLB/2019-misc.shtml

^{3 https://bitbucket.org/trhdata/mlb-stadiums/downloads/}

Here are some of my takeaways as to the O's attendance in 2019:

Baltimore's Metropolitan area size ranked 25th, just a hair behind St. Louis. The 10 lowest-revenue clubs and the clubs from the 10 smallest markets are eligible to receive a Competitive Balance pick (fewer than 20 clubs are in the mix each year, as some clubs qualify under both criteria).

O's ranked 28th in total attendance, ahead of Tampa Bay and Miami.

O's ranked 12th in per capita attendance, a bit ahead of the Mariners, the Phillies and the Braves.

P.S.
3 teams' season attendance exceeded their metropolitan area population - Brewers, Cardinals, and Rockies.

In per capita attendance, Yankees ranked 28th and Mets ranked last.

Edited January 10, 2020 by AZRon
Added a column displaying season's attendance as a % of stadium capacity for the 2019 season

[Can_of_corn]

When you are talking about metropolitan areas with two teams might it not be fair to account for the presence of another team?

Also Miami is just brutal.

[AZRon]

4 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

When you are talking about metropolitan areas with two teams might it not be fair to account for the presence of another team?....

Why not?  MLB uses the size of metropolitan area (regardless of the number of teams in that area) as one of the criteria for eligibility for a competitive balance draft pick.

[Frobby]

13 minutes ago, AZRon said:

Why not?  MLB uses the size of metropolitan area (regardless of the number of teams in that area) as one of the criteria for eligibility for a competitive balance draft pick.

I think it would be interesting to add a column showing the distance to the closest other team.     Even that wouldn’t really capture the geographic effect though.   Baltimore is really hemmed in between DC and Philly.    St. Louis is at least 300 miles from any other team in all directions.   

[Aglets]

Mad props to Colorado, St. Louis, and Milwaukee.

[AZRon]

16 hours ago, Frobby said:

I think it would be interesting to add a column showing the distance to the closest other team.     Even that wouldn’t really capture the geographic effect though.   Baltimore is really hemmed in between DC and Philly.    St. Louis is at least 300 miles from any other team in all directions.   

I thought about that (but the compensation for my efforts is so "spare").

OK -- I'll do it later.

Later has arrived -- See opening post

Edited January 9, 2020 by AZRon

[byrdz]

How in the world does Miami still have a major league baseball team?

[Frobby]

31 minutes ago, AZRon said:

I thought about that (but the compensation for my efforts is so "spare").

OK -- I'll do it later

By the way, this map from Seat Geek is interesting.    It breaks the US into counties and then shows which team “owns” the majority of online ticket sales in that county.    https://www.google.com/amp/s/seatgeek.com/tba/articles/where-do-mlb-fans-live-mapping-baseball-fandom-across-the-u-s/amp/

I think Milwaukee’s per capita performance is really impressive when you consider this map.   Basically, only people from Wisconsin go to Brewers games, and the fans in the northwest part of the state are more likely to go to a Twins game.    

[UpstateNYfan]

For a large city the attendance per capita data has a low limit...If the Yankees sold out every game, their attendance would max out at 4.3 million and their max attendance per capita would be a little over .2. So, does that say NY is a bad baseball city? Likewise, a small metro area with just "average" MLB attendance can result In an inflated numbers.

[sportsfan8703]

During our “run” we did such a good job of driving out the NYY and BOS fans that now we’re losing and we don’t have those same O’s fans to replace them. 

[Going Underground]

15 hours ago, Frobby said:

I think it would be interesting to add a column showing the distance to the closest other team.     Even that wouldn’t really capture the geographic effect though.   Baltimore is really hemmed in between DC and Philly.    St. Louis is at least 300 miles from any other team in all directions.   

About 250 miles to Kansas City and 300 to Chicago.

 

[Going Underground]

This map also but not sure how accurate.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/04/24/upshot/facebook-baseball-map.html?mtrref=undefined&gwh=4B5F67755B0A82B9B7FEB9550F5ADBC1&gwt=pay&assetType=REGIWALL#9,38.7425,-77.1142

 

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/04/23/upshot/24-upshot-baseball.html

 

 

[Going Underground]

One more by county :

https://www.vividseats.com/blog/most-popular-mlb-teams-by-state-county/map

[AZRon]

OK -- I updated the opening post to this thread - See opening post displaying the mileage to the nearest opponent's stadium.

Let me know if this additional information supports any of your opinions.

 

[AZRon]

2 hours ago, UpstateNYfan said:

For a large city the attendance per capita data has a low limit...If the Yankees sold out every game, their attendance would max out at 4.3 million and their max attendance per capita would be a little over .2. So, does that say NY is a bad baseball city? Likewise, a small metro area with just "average" MLB attendance can result In an inflated numbers.

Well, that's true, I'll add a column for % of capacity later.

Maybe, that will further enlighten us as to a team's relative:
fervency of fandom
marketing effectiveness
availability of alternative entertainment venues
competitiveness