Attendance Check In

We posted about the year over year (2022 vs 2023) attendance increase in our post, titled Mind Bending Attendance Logic from this past October.  As a quick reminder, we noted in that post that MLB was celebrating the 6.2 million increase in fans from the prior year and attributing the increase to the implementation of the pitch clock. Our take here at BP was that this had much less to do about quickening the pace of games and a lot more to do with the end of the Coronavirus in 2023, since although the pandemic was much improved in 2022 the death rate was still rather high.

Therefore, our belief was that to compare 2023 vs 2022 without taking into account the pandemic was more than just an apples to oranges comparison, but more along the lines of apples to car batteries.  The reasoning is that a good portion of the fan base was likely still reticent to go to a crowded ballpark in 2022 due to the prevalence of the virus.  Instead, we stated that it would be best to wait until 2024 to compare last year’s attendance figures to this year’s to get a real sense if the pitch clock had any significant effect in bringing fans back to the stadiums.

Well here we are in 2024, and as of May 23^rd there have been 753 games played in total or 15% of the schedule so far.  Last year at this time, total attendance for all 30 teams was 20,171,095 and this year the total is 20,377,203.  That is an increase of 206,108 from the prior year or roughly 1%.  That increase if annualized would be about an additional 1.3 million over the course of the year.  Yes, an increase no matter how small is still an increase those on the pro pitch clock side would argue, yet last year showed a 10% year over year increase, while this year is only 1%. Percentage wise that is a hefty drop.  In addition, the average game time has dropped on average another four minutes from 2 hours 39 minutes to 2 hours 35 minutes.

If you want to get into the head of the pitch clock enthusiasts, we figure this is how they would correlate the shorter games to the attendance increases.

Therefore, on average every minute of reduction in game time last year brought in 258,333 additional fans, while this year the average jumped to 325,000.  These figures in the table above support the pitch clock fans, but that only works if you buy into the belief that the increase in attendance was solely or mostly predicated on the shorter games in 2023 and now in 2024.  Then again, perhaps the increase in fans is only because we are now almost two years out from the worst of the pandemic.  We have no doubt that some fans have been drawn into the sport due to the shorter games, but how many are put off by the pitch clock.  No one really knows, and we here at BP profess not to have any scientific backing to our theory.  The thing is neither does MLB.  Only time will tell.