Attendance?
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Attendance?
- Hendrix
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Attendance?
Anybody have any idea why our attendane has been so crappy so far this year? Last year we averaged almost 30k which put us around mid pack. At the start of the year iirc we were even higher, and near the top of the league.
This year we've gotten off to an amazing start with the best record in baseball. Are a pretty sizeable market. And there's only 20k fans showing up for games, which ranks us 27th in the league.
Was there just low expectations for the team this year, and attendance hasn't caught up with the record? W/E the excuse it shouldn't be enough to be hovering around the same as the Nats imo.
This year we've gotten off to an amazing start with the best record in baseball. Are a pretty sizeable market. And there's only 20k fans showing up for games, which ranks us 27th in the league.
Was there just low expectations for the team this year, and attendance hasn't caught up with the record? W/E the excuse it shouldn't be enough to be hovering around the same as the Nats imo.
oak2455 wrote:Do understand English???
Re: Attendance?
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- RealGM
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Re: Attendance?
It'll pick up, regardless of how we do in the next couple weeks imo. The expectations of this team were in the gutter to start the season, and not many thought or think we even stand a chance as of now.
Jays fever hasn't plagued the city yet, but if we're still around 1st at the end of May I can see fairweather fans coming out often. But the Yanks and BoSox are always a big draw, thus why our attendance was steady in the early part of last season. That and the expectations surrounding the team last year were much greater.
Jays fever hasn't plagued the city yet, but if we're still around 1st at the end of May I can see fairweather fans coming out often. But the Yanks and BoSox are always a big draw, thus why our attendance was steady in the early part of last season. That and the expectations surrounding the team last year were much greater.
galacticos2 wrote:MLB needs to introduce an Amnesty clause. Bautista would be my first victim.
Bautista outplays his contract by more than $70 million over the next four seasons (2013-2016).
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The economy? I think people have low expectations for the Jays (which is justified). If they show that they can keep this up, attendance should go up accordingly.
"I'm doing what I love to do. So if I can never walk again because of what I love to do, that's a chance I'll take. I'll die on the court." - Alvin Williams
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- Hendrix
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Re: Attendance?
The economy really shouldn't have anything to do with our attendance in comparison to other teams. Toronto's probably been hit by the economy less then a lot of other cities out there. I could understand league wide going down (assuming same ticket prices).
Maybe it's just Bo Sox/Yankee games + fan inerest + lack of weekend games so far.
Maybe it's just Bo Sox/Yankee games + fan inerest + lack of weekend games so far.
oak2455 wrote:Do understand English???
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I'm pretty sure you are crazy in remembering the jays around the top of the league in attendance in the beginning of last season.
Unless we open against the Yanks and the Sox, we always have poor attendance in April. There is no chance of the dome being open, and people are paying attention to the NHL playoffs. It's just the way it's always been. Games with the dome open are just way better, imo, so I never worry about it.
Unless we open against the Yanks and the Sox, we always have poor attendance in April. There is no chance of the dome being open, and people are paying attention to the NHL playoffs. It's just the way it's always been. Games with the dome open are just way better, imo, so I never worry about it.
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Attendance is as expected so far. It will pick up with more weekend and Red Sox/Yankee games.
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- The Duke
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Yup... its not news Management were not expecting.... I'm sure they saw it coming like every April.
The longer we stay at the top, we shouldnt have a problem with attendence come mid-may.
The longer we stay at the top, we shouldnt have a problem with attendence come mid-may.
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- chargerxthirty
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Re: Attendance?
We've always been poor in April.
However, if we can keep hovering around the top of the league to kick off May... and perhaps still seem to be captivating everyone's attention by mid-May. We will start to draw some big crowds.
Theres just too much **** to watch on TV right now. NBA Playoffs, NHL playoffs plus a lot of MLB on tv too including the Boo-Jays. Once the stanley cup is over and the NBA champs are crowned, we will be getting a lot of interest barring collapse.
I have a 50" HD Samsung Plasma, and for my money ( $0 ) ... I can deal with a great picture with quality audio for free with like 7 games to switch between a night. I am a die hard for the Jays and I won't be going until all of the TV Mayhem is over.
However, if we can keep hovering around the top of the league to kick off May... and perhaps still seem to be captivating everyone's attention by mid-May. We will start to draw some big crowds.
Theres just too much **** to watch on TV right now. NBA Playoffs, NHL playoffs plus a lot of MLB on tv too including the Boo-Jays. Once the stanley cup is over and the NBA champs are crowned, we will be getting a lot of interest barring collapse.
I have a 50" HD Samsung Plasma, and for my money ( $0 ) ... I can deal with a great picture with quality audio for free with like 7 games to switch between a night. I am a die hard for the Jays and I won't be going until all of the TV Mayhem is over.
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- Hendrix
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Modern_epic wrote:I'm pretty sure you are crazy in remembering the jays around the top of the league in attendance in the beginning of last season.
I'm guessing I must have checked like super early last year when a big chunk of our games were aginast the Yanks. But we still brought in 27-28k last year for April.
I don't really see why watching other stuff should effect our market a heck of a lot more then it effects others. Sure the NBA, and NHL playoffs are going right now, but it's not like we actually have a single team in the playoffs where a ton of the markets above us in atendace do, and have smaller populations to work with from the start to pool spectators from.
I mean Detroit has a smaller population. 2 Pro sports teams in the playoffs currently. A struggling economy. The same weather. A MLB team performing worse then ours. And is pulling in 7k more fans/game.
oak2455 wrote:Do understand English???
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poor attendance likely has everything to do with weather. The Rogers Centre is one of the worst venues for watching a sporting event when the roof is closed. Roof open = more people going including me. 

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Hate to say it but the Skydome is already a completely out-dated stadium for baseball, and more specifically the baseball market in Toronto. Yes getting a ticket to Fenway Park in Boston or Wrigley field in Chicago is virtually impossible in those two "baseball mad" towns, however the capacity in both those stadiums is less than 34,000, even when the Jays have attendance in the mid-thirties, you sit there and go "where is everybody?!" because the place is just to cavernous for a baseball stadium. The mistake was that the City of Toronto built a stadium in 1989 that was 'state of the art' for 1969, they simply made the Houston Astrodome a convertible and called it state-of-the-art. Rogers bought the dome for 25 million bucks, I know of homes in Rosedale that go for more than that, the Jays need a baseball specific park, with a modest capacity to create ticket demand (Toronto FC/Montreal Allouettes Economics 101).
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- RealGM
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Jatt wrote:Hate to say it but the Skydome is already a completely out-dated stadium for baseball, and more specifically the baseball market in Toronto. Yes getting a ticket to Fenway Park in Boston or Wrigley field in Chicago is virtually impossible in those two "baseball mad" towns, however the capacity in both those stadiums is less than 34,000, even when the Jays have attendance in the mid-thirties, you sit there and go "where is everybody?!" because the place is just to cavernous for a baseball stadium. The mistake was that the City of Toronto built a stadium in 1989 that was 'state of the art' for 1969, they simply made the Houston Astrodome a convertible and called it state-of-the-art. Rogers bought the dome for 25 million bucks, I know of homes in Rosedale that go for more than that, the Jays need a baseball specific park, with a modest capacity to create ticket demand (Toronto FC/Montreal Allouettes Economics 101).
It's alright. Those extra seats will be useful in September and October.

galacticos2 wrote:MLB needs to introduce an Amnesty clause. Bautista would be my first victim.
Bautista outplays his contract by more than $70 million over the next four seasons (2013-2016).
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Re: Attendance?
Attendance has been 27k, 30k and 31k the last three games (the best 3-game stretch of the season so far). It's picking up, although that's only over about 14% of our schedule so far. Still, as I said, it's the most consistent attendance boost we've had all year; we've been varying wildly so far, you know this will steady out as time progresses, and it'll be higer rather than lower if we remain competitive.
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tsherkin wrote:Attendance has been 27k, 30k and 31k the last three games (the best 3-game stretch of the season so far). It's picking up, although that's only over about 14% of our schedule so far. Still, as I said, it's the most consistent attendance boost we've had all year; we've been varying wildly so far, you know this will steady out as time progresses, and it'll be higer rather than lower if we remain competitive.
I think we're talking about Rogers Centre attendance? And during our last series at home against Texas, we drew 21k, 13k, 15k, respectively.
galacticos2 wrote:MLB needs to introduce an Amnesty clause. Bautista would be my first victim.
Bautista outplays his contract by more than $70 million over the next four seasons (2013-2016).
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Right then; if you take out the Away games like an intelligent person... then our median attendance is just over 17,500, with a minimum just over 12k and an outlier max of just over 48k on opening day. Removing that, we peaked at just over 22k.
If we roll back to last year through the first couple of home games last year (ignoring the 3-game homestand against Boston), we averaged almost 23k. So yeah, we've fallen back hard. We averaged over 24k in May, almost 29k in June, over 32k in July, almost 35k in August and then dropped to just over 31k in September. That's despite 6 games against the Yanks and Red Sox averaging almost 36k and despite riding an 8-game streak into mid-September coming off of a roadstand and blowing through series sweeps of Minny and Tampa.
So while our attendance is down despite our success, I think it's a little early to be calling much, especially with so clear an upward trend.
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When Boston and NY roll in I'm sure the attendance will pick up then, and then hopefully stay up for the rest of the year
Even Tampa Bay for that matter (maybe??)
-n
Even Tampa Bay for that matter (maybe??)
-n
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- J-Roc
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You'd have to compare the attendance to the attendance last year against the same teams. So how did we do with Texas last year? Probably not great.
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We averaged just under 16k in our two home games against the Rangers last year, and just about 26k in Texas. Our home attendance against Detroit fell off sharply (even with the 48k game).
Last year, we averaged around 27k at home against Detroit and this year, it's just over 23k and just over 14k (bottoming out just over 12) over the last 3. We averaged just under 21k against Oakland in the series earlier this year, and just over 24k last year (with three games at 28k+). However, last year, two of our first three games against Oakland were just over 16k, and it eventually picked up (we played Oakland 7-9, then 112-115).
Last year, we averaged around 27k at home against Detroit and this year, it's just over 23k and just over 14k (bottoming out just over 12) over the last 3. We averaged just under 21k against Oakland in the series earlier this year, and just over 24k last year (with three games at 28k+). However, last year, two of our first three games against Oakland were just over 16k, and it eventually picked up (we played Oakland 7-9, then 112-115).
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The sad thing is that the annual surge for the Yankee and Red Sox games is due to fans from NY and New England coming to Toronto. It's not thousands of Toronto ball fans thinking to themselves "dammit the Yankees are here this weekend let's get tickets!".
There will be absolutely no surge for the Rays.
There is no discernible surge for a Roy Halladay start vs. Scott Richmond either.
I think there is a die hard core of 15-20K that come out to a lot of games. The casual fan (who used to fill up the other 30 k seats in the Dome in the early 90s) won't come back until the team is a proven contender with a few stars in the lineup.
There will be absolutely no surge for the Rays.
There is no discernible surge for a Roy Halladay start vs. Scott Richmond either.
I think there is a die hard core of 15-20K that come out to a lot of games. The casual fan (who used to fill up the other 30 k seats in the Dome in the early 90s) won't come back until the team is a proven contender with a few stars in the lineup.
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It is indeed a sad state of affairs and I had noticed the lack of correlation to a Halladay start; believe me, I looked. I think most fans see what we do; a team that has done precisely nothing since 93. We were paced for 77 wins in '94, then basically got worse and floundered until Tim Johnson came in with Jose Canseco, Carlos Delgado and Shawn Green each giving us 35+ HRs while Clemens, Hentgen, Chris Carpenter (and even Woody Williams) pitched well for us en route to 88 wins (a total we haven't matched, and we've only hit 86+ 3 times since that year).
So one can't really fault a hockey city for being "fairweather" fans (and I use 'fairweather' loosely, given the clime and the fans), you know? It'll pick up if we stay competitive, especially if we stay as competitive as we've been in the early-going).
So one can't really fault a hockey city for being "fairweather" fans (and I use 'fairweather' loosely, given the clime and the fans), you know? It'll pick up if we stay competitive, especially if we stay as competitive as we've been in the early-going).