2024 Baseball Attendance

It was the prevailing theory that the introduction of the pitch clock and other measures to speed up the game resulted in the attendance jump in 2023.  That year, attendance increased by more than 6 million fans or 9.6%.  It was our thought in this prior post from the end of the 2023 season that the increase in 2023 had more to do with the ending of the pandemic and less about speeding up the game.

Specifically in that 2023 post we here at BP noted that “Instead, we would argue that the increase this year is largely related to a significant drop in the coronavirus threat in 2023 as seen above.  If we see another significant increase in attendance for the 2024 season, we will stand corrected and would be willing to readily admit our mistake.  Until that season concludes, we stand by our belief that rule changes are not what drove the increase in fans in 2023”.

Therefore, the data now from 2024 reinforces our contention even more that the small 0.8% increase in attendance this past season that fans came back in force in 2023 due to the diminishing threat of coronavirus rather than speeding up the game.  Even if we were to believe that the 2023 increase was mostly due to speeding up the game, then those measures have clearly stalled, so the question to MLB is now what?  The “now what” is likely more rule changes, and more modifications to a game that we noted in this prior post.  Time will only tell, but we would be shocked if we see another increase like the one in 2023.  Instead the attendance issues are completely separate to speed of game and likely will only be cured to addressing the lack of competitiveness in the game.  More thoughts on that and other reasons for the attendance struggles in future posts.