Orioles attendance 2024

[Sports Guy]

 

[Sports Guy]

Attendance probably ends up in the 2.21-2.22 area.

If you are going to raise prices and reduce benefits, you better do something big this offseason if you want that number to be closer to 2.4M next year…which should be the goal.

[Frobby]

1 hour ago, Sports Guy said:

Attendance probably ends up in the 2.21-2.22 area.

If you are going to raise prices and reduce benefits, you better do something big this offseason if you want that number to be closer to 2.4M next year…which should be the goal.

I agree they’ll end up a little north of 2.2 mm.  Honestly, that’s about the least I would have expected.   

The best thing they can do for next year’s ticket sales is to make it pretty deep into the playoffs this year.  I’m not too optimistic about that, but we know that stranger things have happened. 
 

[SemperFi]

2 hours ago, Sports Guy said:

Attendance probably ends up in the 2.21-2.22 area.

If you are going to raise prices and reduce benefits, you better do something big this offseason if you want that number to be closer to 2.4M next year…which should be the goal.

Hope in whatever form sells ticket packages and corporate sponsorships/signage.  Interesting to see what the Orioles pitch is for next year. 

This year it was an easy grow-but was it a good experience for those more casual fans?  Will they come back, will they come back more often?  it's certainly going to be more difficult to grow attendance growing forward and much more difficult if they continue to sputter.

But I agree-for planning and budgeting I would plug in 2.4m-that's the seat in the stands-then they need to work on the attachment rate.

Edited September 9 by SemperFi

[Sports Guy]

Attendance is only going to be so high for weekday games, especially during the school year. 

Next year you won’t have the Phillies series at home, so you have to adjust for that as well.

So the team is going to have to do some special things (agree with Frobby that winning in the postseason will help).

One thing I don’t see happening as much is the drive to sign up for season tickets now to get postseason tickets this year. With so many getting to go last year, after years of not going, there is a certainly level of novelty that gets worn off the second straight year.

So I really think what they do in the postseason and offseason will determine where things stand for next year.

[bpilktree67]

We have a very bad end of the year schedule for attendance.  We know once school comes back that attendance will drop unless you have important games vs teams in contention.  Our schedule since middle of August when schools went back has is.

4 games Houston drew well but then had the Sunday night game the day before a lot of schools went back that hurt attendance.

3 vs the White Sox

3 vs the Rays

3 vs the Tigers 

3 vs the Giants.

All the big series seem to be on the road.  Red Sox which is semi fighting for playoffs, Yanks which could be for division then Twins which could be for the 1st Wild card seed.   The Yankees and Twins series would have drawn well well for us compared to what we will see with who we have.  

[LookitsPuck]

3 hours ago, Sports Guy said:

Attendance probably ends up in the 2.21-2.22 area.

If you are going to raise prices and reduce benefits, you better do something big this offseason if you want that number to be closer to 2.4M next year…which should be the goal.

Basically, the only big driver is winning and, to a much lesser extent, investment. Basically, if investment creates more winning, the fans will come.

Rubenstein needs to make a splash. Right now, we've just seen him throw hats around and slap T Rowe Price everywhere he can. The rubber meets the road this offseason. If the O's putter out and have an early exit in the playoffs, are season ticket sales going to skyrocket? I don't think so.

Let's look at what happened the last time the O's started winning.

• In 2011, they stunk and bottomed out at around 1.75m fans
• In 2012, they surprised everybody and not only had a winning season for the first time in forever, but they made the playoffs, too. Attendance went up to 2.1m
• In 2013, on the heels of a playoff appearance and apparently renewed interest in the team that doesn't suck perpetually, attendance went up even though they missed the playoffs at 2.35m fans
• In 2014, the O's won the division, but coming off a playoff-less year in 2013, attendance only went up 100k fans from 2.35m to 2.46m

Now, 2015 was an aberration, IMHO. About the only time I'll ever say that crime perception impacted attendance was 2015 due to the Freddie Gray protests. Attendance dropped to around 2.3m from 2.46m. Now, it could be because of the protests, but it also could be that the team was mediocre. They didn't have a winning season, and only won 81 games.

Attendance dropped again 2016, even though they made the playoffs, but they won 89 games and lost in the WC game.

From then on, it's pretty obvious. They kept losing and losing spectacularly. COVID, etc. 

Anyways, I don't see a world which the team exceeds 2.5m fans/year. The Nats coming to town really destroyed the upside. Even if Rubenstein starts spending money and the team makes major upgrades to the stadium experience...the ceiling is probably around the 2.5m fans/year number. Which, let's be frank, would be averaging nearly 31k fans/game.

Just win. BTW, I wrote an article on this and did some analysis on whether winning, the homicide rate, and/or spending has an impact on attendance and, well: https://stephenpauladams.substack.com/p/orioles-attendance-is-up

The main takeaway is winning matters, spending has little correlation, and the homicide rate has a very weak correlation. 

The Rubenstein era will be interesting since this is a fresh slate and you don't have the fan apathy because of Angelos/constant losing.

Edited September 9 by LookitsPuck

[Sports Guy]

42 minutes ago, bpilktree67 said:

We have a very bad end of the year schedule for attendance.  We know once school comes back that attendance will drop unless you have important games vs teams in contention.  Our schedule since middle of August when schools went back has is.

4 games Houston drew well but then had the Sunday night game the day before a lot of schools went back that hurt attendance.

3 vs the White Sox

3 vs the Rays

3 vs the Tigers 

3 vs the Giants.

All the big series seem to be on the road.  Red Sox which is semi fighting for playoffs, Yanks which could be for division then Twins which could be for the 1st Wild card seed.   The Yankees and Twins series would have drawn well well for us compared to what we will see with who we have.  

You aren’t wrong but most tickets are sold before the season, so some of this doesn’t matter.

In season sales are probably hurt some though.

[LookitsPuck]

7 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

You aren’t wrong but most tickets are sold before the season, so some of this doesn’t matter.

In season sales are probably hurt some though.

This correct. https://trace.tennessee.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1426&context=jasm

Quote

Previous research has identified that winning is a significant influence on total attendance (Davis, 2009; Langhorst, 2014), though the effect of winning is different for different types of tickets. Individual game tickets are largely influenced by team performance during the current season; however, since season tickets are sold prior to the start of the season, they are influenced by the anticipation of team performance for the upcoming season (Drea et al., 2016).

There are other factors, of course, certainly school has started and that has an impact. But I reckon the Orioles just puttering along isn't helping things. It'd be different if they were performing like they were to start the season. But the team currently looks like the 2015 Orioles (a .500 team) than the 2023 Orioles (or first half 2024 Orioles, for that matter). 

[Frobby]

39 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

You aren’t wrong but most tickets are sold before the season, so some of this doesn’t matter.

In season sales are probably hurt some though.

This is why I don’t think the full effect of the 2015 Freddie Gray riots was felt until 2016, the first time season ticket holders had a chance to non-renew.  That’s why 2016 had worse attendance than 2015 despite the team having a playoff race that went to the final day.  

[fansince1988]

Are the kids cheer free tickets included in the attendance figures? 

[LookitsPuck]

5 minutes ago, fansince1988 said:

Are the kids cheer free tickets included in the attendance figures? 

This is a great question and one I'm not even sure the answer to.

The history is littered with situations like, say, the A's who allowed nearly 47k fans to attend a game for free. They said afterwords they didn't count it towards their attendance since their standard was paid attendance. There was even a supposed scandal in the early 2000s in which under Bud Selig the commissioner's office had teams give away tickets, even if those tickets were never used, they were supposedly used to prop up attendance.

I believe MLB goes by paid attendance, so that it doesn't matter at the turnstile. The bigger nuance is whether free is considered paid attendance. There's something to be said either way about this. I've been digging around on this topic, and there are a few articles that reference it. Here's an older LA Times article (https://www.latimes.com/la-sp-attendance-082305-story.html) that mentions the following:

Quote

The Angels sold out three weekend games in last month’s series against the New York Yankees, including an announced crowd of 44,035 on July 23, above. But the announced attendance -- tickets sold -- differed for each game, as did the actual attendance. Complimentary tickets are not included in either count. The Angels list stadium capacity as 45,050.

It'd be interesting to see things separated as paid attendance, complimentary attendance, actual attendance, but I doubt we'll ever see that level of transparency from MLB teams. It's in their best interest to show paid attendance regardless of how many butts are in seats. 

[MCO'sFan]

5 hours ago, Sports Guy said:

Attendance probably ends up in the 2.21-2.22 area.

If you are going to raise prices and reduce benefits, you better do something big this offseason if you want that number to be closer to 2.4M next year…which should be the goal.

I bought a season ticket package this year for the first time since 2014. I have renewed for next year. 

[SemperFi]

7 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

You aren’t wrong but most tickets are sold before the season, so some of this doesn’t matter.

In season sales are probably hurt some though.

Sports Guy-

Isn't attendance becoming more of a  legacy statistic similar to Avg v. OPS? 

It's a very different era than 1965 when there were few suites or "premium" seating and hardly any amenities beyond a beer and hot dog.  Today a seat and it's attachment rate are not comparable between say NY and KC-and we've seen the leverage of corporate sponsorship with TRP. 

In the Warehouse I would think growing attachment rate and corporate partners would at some point have comparable priority as a revenue driver.  Seat sales account only ~20% of revenue and shrinking,  The revenue tilt is upgrading fans/corps. to a premium seat at an average of 4X the price.  

Although this slide is from '22 it details the discrepancy between teams that can leverage premium seating and suites.  Playoff revenue is also likely in this slide which benefits teams like Houston.

There is no real way I have found to judge revenue other than Forbes-just food for thought.

 

[SemperFi]

3 hours ago, LookitsPuck said:

Basically, the only big driver is winning and, to a much lesser extent, investment. Basically, if investment creates more winning, the fans will come.

Rubenstein needs to make a splash. Right now, we've just seen him throw hats around and slap T Rowe Price everywhere he can. The rubber meets the road this offseason. If the O's putter out and have an early exit in the playoffs, are season ticket sales going to skyrocket? I don't think so.

Let's look at what happened the last time the O's started winning.

• In 2011, they stunk and bottomed out at around 1.75m fans
• In 2012, they surprised everybody and not only had a winning season for the first time in forever, but they made the playoffs, too. Attendance went up to 2.1m
• In 2013, on the heels of a playoff appearance and apparently renewed interest in the team that doesn't suck perpetually, attendance went up even though they missed the playoffs at 2.35m fans
• In 2014, the O's won the division, but coming off a playoff-less year in 2013, attendance only went up 100k fans from 2.35m to 2.46m

Now, 2015 was an aberration, IMHO. About the only time I'll ever say that crime perception impacted attendance was 2015 due to the Freddie Gray protests. Attendance dropped to around 2.3m from 2.46m. Now, it could be because of the protests, but it also could be that the team was mediocre. They didn't have a winning season, and only won 81 games.

Attendance dropped again 2016, even though they made the playoffs, but they won 89 games and lost in the WC game.

From then on, it's pretty obvious. They kept losing and losing spectacularly. COVID, etc. 

Anyways, I don't see a world which the team exceeds 2.5m fans/year. The Nats coming to town really destroyed the upside. Even if Rubenstein starts spending money and the team makes major upgrades to the stadium experience...the ceiling is probably around the 2.5m fans/year number. Which, let's be frank, would be averaging nearly 31k fans/game.

Just win. BTW, I wrote an article on this and did some analysis on whether winning, the homicide rate, and/or spending has an impact on attendance and, well: https://stephenpauladams.substack.com/p/orioles-attendance-is-up

The main takeaway is winning matters, spending has little correlation, and the homicide rate has a very weak correlation. 

The Rubenstein era will be interesting since this is a fresh slate and you don't have the fan apathy because of Angelos/constant losing.

Hi Puck-

From a marketing standpoint the Orioles will eventually reach a relative saturation point which I agree is around 2.5m then it's about leveraging money from the fan experience-winning being a chief component of that.