“Statistics do not lie but liars use statistics”
Major League Baseball has continued to promote that it is back and better than ever, mostly by stating that rules changes employed in 2022 have helped to increase attendance at ballparks. Those rule changes included the implementation of the pitch clock, extra inning ghost runner, and the limitation of pickoff attempts to name a few.
| Year | Attendance | % Change |
| 2022 | 64,556,658 | |
| 2023 | 70,747,365 | 9.6% |
| 2024 | 71,348,405 | 0.8% |
| 2025 | 71,409,522 | 0.1% |
| 2026 | *71,609,067 | 0.3% |
As per the table above one could interpret that attendance figures soared by 10.8% since 2022 until today after MLB implemented the rule changes. Taking a closer look at that increase provides a more nuanced explanation.
2023 – This is the first year and the largest jump in attendance post rule changes. The problem with using 2022 as a baseline attendance marker is that although better, the US, like many nations was still feeling the effects of the coronavirus (Covid) pandemic. In fact, the US government did not officially declare an end to the pandemic until around April/May 2023. Therefore, we attribute much of this attendance increase not to rule changes, but rather a US population that was once again comfortable going out in public after essentially being sequestered in their homes since almost 2020.
2024 – The second year attendance increased, but only by less than 1%. Once again, although much less, there might have been a certain percentage of the population in 2023 (especially those immune compromised) that did not venture out fully that year, since officials did not signal an end to the pandemic until early 2023 at the start of the baseball season. Therefore, it is not unrealistic to assign a percentage of that increase, albeit small percentage in 2024, to those that began coming to the ballpark again due to the lessened threat of Covid.
2025 – This third year shows a minuscule increase, but in reality it should have been a bit larger, since the Tampa Bay Rays ballpark was damaged before the season ever began. For that reason, the Rays had to play in a much smaller minor league ballpark and thus their attendance decreased by more than 600,000 fans this year as compared to 2024, which affected the overall MLB attendance numbers.
2026 – MLB has currently completed almost 90% of the season, so the figure above is an estimate of the total attendance by season’s end. Based on this figure the attendance rise will only be about 0.3%, which is somewhat overstated, since the Rays moved back to their home stadium in 2026 after repairs, which again impacted the overall MLB attendance numbers. If we average these last two years, the increase in attendance is probably 0.15% for both 2025 and 2026.
Another issue is that any analysis of post rule changes on attendance and fan interest should instead use 2019 as the base year, which is the year just prior to the global Covid pandemic hitting the world. That year the attendance was 68,506,896. Using that year as the base, we see that the total percentage increase from 2019 until today is roughly half or just 4.5%. It is then still logical to attribute much of the 2023 attendance increase to the ending of the pandemic rather than the implementation of the rule changes.
Finally, a key factor for MLB enacting the rule changes was due to the dips in attendance below 70 million in 2018 and 2019, but there have been ebbs and flows of attendance beforehand and fans have always seemed to maintain their allegiance to their teams for the most part over time. Instead, MLB decided to rip up the history of the game by applying these new rules, to supposedly bring in new fans to the ballparks. Applying a solution such as new rule changes to bring in maybe at best 1%-2% more fans while damaging the integrity of the game for the other 98%-99% loyal fans has done a great disservice to the overall history of baseball.
Instead of implementing new rules, MLB never examined any other methods that might have increased attendance and the overall fan experience such as:
- Lowering the ticket or vendor prices; and/or
- Reducing the commercial time between innings
Why did they never explore those possibilities? Like so many posts here at BP it all comes down to greed, and the sad sack of owners who care little about acting as proper stewards of the game, but instead just focus on extracting as much money out of their fan bases as possible.
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