Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Worst New Stadium Attendance... Ever?

After last night's game, the Nationals have now drawn 2,140,317 for the year, an average of 29,319. While this puts the Nationals toward the bottom third in attendance in the league this year, it's actually much worse than that.

Compared to other teams playing their first years in new stadiums, we are coming very close to setting an historic low for worst attendance ever (or at least in the recent generation of new parks since SkyDome opened in 1989).

Here, from best to worst, are the average attendance figures for all 18 parks:
Stadium Avg. Attend.
SkyDome 46678
Oriole Park at Camden Yards 44047
Turner Field 42771
Busch Stadium III 42063
Coors Field 41852
Pac Bell Park 40973
Citizens Bank Park 39754
Jacobs Field 39121
Minute Maid Park 37730
PETCO Park 37244
Comiskey Park II 36224
Safeco Field 36004
Miller Park 34704
Rangers Ballpark in Arlington 30904
PNC Park 30430
Comerica Park 30106
Nationals Park 29487
Great American Ballpark 29077

To finish ahead of Bowden's Reds, Bowden's Nationals will need to average 26,867 per night over the final 8 games of the year. Monday night there were just 21,759 on hand and 24,997 last night. It's supposed to be 78 degrees and sunny all weekend, so I guess there's hope, but right now it's looking like we're going to set the standard for the least successful first year in a new stadium ever.

And just look at those numbers. Most of the teams on this list blew us away. The average average is over 37,000. The teams we're "competing" with at the bottom of the list are some of the absolute worst franchises in all of sports. The Tigers have turned it around, but remember where they were in 2000--in the middle of 12 straight losing seasons. The rest--Texas, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati--are all teams that haven't seen really any winning at all in a generation and have had meandering, awful leadership for years.

But just like Stan said, they're getting the attendance they deserve.

7 comments:

Steve Shoup said...

Yeah this would be pretty bad if we fell below the Reds. I think an interesting add on would be percentage of tickets sold because while some teams would remain high the Nats are only drawing 71-72% of capacity, Pirates were near 80% (Reds were even worse than the Nats). Just an idea for another way to look at the numbers. Thanks again for showing us some of the harsh truth about this team.

Steven said...

Here you go. By %, we could catch GASP, but not Texas.

Pac Bell Park--98.5%
Busch Stadium III--93.5%
SkyDome--92.4%
Oriole Park at Camden Yards--91.8%
Citizens Bank Park--91.4%
Jacobs Field--90.2%
Minute Maid Park--89.8%
PETCO Park--87.7%
Turner Field--85.4%
Coors Field--83.0%
Miller Park--82.8%
Comiskey Park II--82.3%
PNC Park--79.0%
Safeco Field--76.4%
Comerica Park--75.0%
Nationals Park--70.4%
Great American Ballpark--69.2%
Rangers Ballpark in Arlington--62.9%

Steve Shoup said...

Great work Steven, I think this is even a more accurate portrayl of where the Nats stand. Luckfully they did the smart thing and reduced ticket prices b/c there would have been a drastic dropoff otherwise.

Ray D. said...

I'm new to this site, but given its name I assume the point of the piece is to support the argument to fire Bowden. Low attendance results from poor performance. So the premis is that the poor performance is Bowden's fault?

I would say that the poor performance this season had two causes: (1) Sticking too long with the "three stooges". (2) Injuries.

The "three stooges" being Wily Mo, Lopez, and Kearns. Who was responsible for them staying in the lineup so long? Was it Bowden, as some suggest. Well then, I say, "fire Manny". If Manny is so weak that he would put these losers in the lineup just because Bowden says so, then he's not managerial material.

Suppose we had been able to rid ourselves of these three early in the season, and that we had been able to play most or the whole season with Guzman, Zimmerman, Milledge, Dukes, and Johnson all healthy. That's at least a .500, maybe playoff, team. Was Bowden responsible for the injuries?

Ray D. said...

I'm new to this site, but given its name I assume the point of the piece is to support the argument to fire Bowden. Low attendance results from poor performance. So the premis is that the poor performance is Bowden's fault?

I would say that the poor performance this season had two causes: (1) Sticking too long with the "three stooges". (2) Injuries.

The "three stooges" being Wily Mo, Lopez, and Kearns. Who was responsible for them staying in the lineup so long? Was it Bowden, as some suggest. Well then, I say, "fire Manny". If Manny is so weak that he would put these losers in the lineup just because Bowden says so, then he's not managerial material.

Suppose we had been able to rid ourselves of these three early in the season, and that we had been able to play most or the whole season with Guzman, Zimmerman, Milledge, Dukes, and Johnson all healthy. That's at least a .500, maybe playoff, team. Was Bowden responsible for the injuries?

Steven said...

@Ray--the attendance post wasn't intended to be part of some extended argument to fire Bowden. It's just a post stating the reality, with nothing really else to say except that it's bad.

Steven said...

That said, on the injuries, you're right we've had some bad luck (Zimmerman, Cordero), but Bowden has brought in an unusually high number of injury prone players. Maybe that was a risk worth taking, but when Bowden says, "who could have guessed that Shawn Hill, Nick JOhnson, Austin Kearns, Dmitri Young, Paul Lo Duca, Johhnny Estrada and Cristian Guzman would all get hurt!!" it's laughable.

I'm not sure you can blame Manny for playing Pena too much. I mean, he benched him for Roger Bernadina at one point.

And you want him to bench Kearns and Pena? Who's he supposed to play? Kory Casto?

Playing Lopez also wasn't a bad call given the options. At least he has some upside versus Belliard. Ronnie put up a great year for him too. That wasn't all that predictable.