Tampa Bay’s Attendance Problem
This is Michael Lortz’ first piece as part of his June residency at FanGraphs. Lortz covers the Tampa Bay baseball market for the appropriately named Tampa Bay Baseball Market and has previously published work in the Community pages, as well. You can find him on Twitter, as well.
By most accounts, Tampa Bay is a growing region. There is job growth, revenue growth, housing growth, and billions in development happening throughout both Tampa and St. Petersburg. But one number that is not growing, despite an increase in expendable income, is attendance at Tropicana Field.
Fortunately, the main reasons why the Rays continue to struggle at the gate have become somewhat well known. Most knowledgeable Tampa Bay residents and baseball fans know Tropicana Field is too far from the population center and the gridlock too tangled for enough fans to see the Rays on a daily basis. This media appears to have become aware of these particular challenges: we’ve seen fewer national editorials of late blaming the Rays’ fanbase for lack of attendance. There’s still the occasional tweet, but published commentary criticizing Tampa Bay sports fans for lack of Rays attendance is rare.
Regardless of how often the problem is covered, there aren’t many articles offering solutions. That is a problem. From the outsider’s perspective, it seems the Rays are running out of ideas to get people to the ballpark. While they can only put so much lipstick on the pig that is Tropicana Field, they’ve altered prices, involved their people in the community, and offered a smorgasbord of various promotions with varying results.
The lack of attendance is putting the Rays in a bind: without revenue from attendance and with lower-than-average broadcast revenue, they have to rely on revenue sharing to stay competitive in one of the more affluent divisions in baseball. And there’s skepticism from baseball owners and front-office personnel throughout the sport as to whether Tampa Bay can ever be a successful major-league market — despite the fact that four franchises spring train in Tampa Bay, two others train just over an hour away, and four minor-league teams call the region home.
At my website, I’ve covered Rays attendance since 2007, the last year the Rays had the Devil in their name. Over the history of the franchise (excluding the inaugural season), there have been four different eras of Rays attendance.
- 1999-2007: The Phantom Ownership (avg 1.3 million)
- 2008-2010: A New Fandom (avg 1.8 million)
- 2011-2013: Indifference Strikes Back (avg 1.5 million)
- 2014-Present: Return of the Empty Seats (avg 1.3 million)
As you can see, even with more recognition and more active ownership, the Rays now draw as many people to Tropicana Field as they did during the Dewon Brazelton years. That’s not a good thing.
There are a few theories as to why Rays attendance has continued to plummet. The first and most obvious is the team’s lack of winss since Joe Maddon and Andrew Friedman departed for greener pastures. That said, the Rays only won 77 games in their last year under Maddon (2014) and still drew 1.4 million fans. The next season, they won 80 under the leadership of Kevin Cash and drew under 1.3 million. So with more wins did not come more tickets sold, which seems to run counter to convention.
Another theory is that rivals no longer draw as they once did in Tampa Bay. The retirement of Derek Jeter and David Ortiz and the presence of less established stars on the Yankees and Red Sox have compelled fewer opposition fans to flock to Tropicana Field.
In 2016, for the second year in a row, average attendance for games at Tropicana Field against the Yankees and Red Sox was below 20,000.
A third theory as to why Rays attendance has decreased is the decline of Friday attendance, specifically. A few years ago, I wrote a Community post here that explored the difference in attendance between weekdays (Mon-Thurs) and weekends (Fri-Sun) and the locality of fans to stadiums. Teams that have over 2 million people within 30 minutes of their stadium had smaller differences in weekend-weekday attendance. The Rays had the fewest fans within 30 minutes of their stadium and the highest difference in weekend-weekday attendance.
Recently, however, Friday attendance has been more like Monday-Thursday attendance than Saturday-Sunday attendance. Years ago, Fridays rose and fell like weekends – most likely due to opponents – but, in the last few years, Friday attendance is barely above that of any other weekday. This might mean that whichever club the Rays are playing no longer has as much weight in Friday ticket-buying decisions and that fans are choosing not to fight gridlock to the ballpark.
A fourth theory on the Rays’ recent decrease is that promotions no longer have the impact they once had. The Rays postgame concert series is a great example of this phenomenon. Concerts used to draw over 30,000; now they’re paired with other promotions to allure fans. The Rays’ front office admits that the concert series hasn’t been the draw it once was and have reduced the attraction from 10 postgame concerts in 2010 to only three in 2016.
There are several other reasons why I feel the Rays are struggling in the Tampa Bay market. Stadium location is undoubtedly the most prominent, but is a new stadium a silver-bullet solution? Over the next few weeks, I’ll theorize and hypothesize and possibly arrive at some solutions to one of the biggest problems facing one of Major League Baseball’s most unsettled franchises.
Michael Lortz is a consultant in the Tampa Bay area. He wrote about the business of Tampa Bay baseball on his site: TampaBayBaseballMarket.com . He can be reached at @tbbaseballmkt . His first novel, Curveball at the Crossroads, is now available.
This is well written. That’s a plus. It is a topic not usually covered here, that’s a plus. It’s gutsy to write a series on Tampa here, that’s a plus. Looking forward to this.
But can Rays fighting gridlock function as high-leverage multi-inning relievers?
Looking forward to this series.
I live in Bradenton so the location is great for me personally, but I completely understand the Tampa crowd not wanting to come over. I think a new stadium at one of the proposed Tampa sites could bring the attendance floor up a few hundred thousand, but you still have to win games. There is no difference between the Madden 77 win season and the cash 80 win season as far as fan excitement goes. If you have a great season, like they did in 08′, I feel like you get a bump for at least 2 seasons even if the product on the field doesn’t replicate that one great season.
I can second that. I lived just outside downtown Bradenton (not saying much) a block from the Manatee River from 2010 through 2012. I attended 20-25 games a year those years. It was 20 minutes from getting in the car to parking, no traffic at all crossing the bay from the south. Then it was a 5 minute walk to the stadium from my $5 off-site parking spot, so 25 minutes total. That’s impossible coming across the bay from Tampa.
Other major problems are the complete lack of public transport in the Tampa Bay area and the relatively low population density for the metropolitan area.
$5 parking? That’s amazing! In Seattle you have to sell your soul in order to be able to afford parking, ticket, and food/drink.
Is it being too far away from the population center, or the gridlock? Because you can imagine that being closer to the population center might make the gridlock problem worse. Without light rail to get to the ballpark it would seem the gridlock problem is going to be tricky to solve.
I’m really interested in this sort of topic, so I’m looking forward to this series.
Echoing a comment below from OTMHeartBBC, my understanding is that the gridlock issue is largely tied to a limited number of bridges for traveling from the largest population (and employment) center to Tropicana Field. And the gridlock is worse because that direction of travel to go to a weekday night game is the same direction as the heavier flow of evening commuters. So I think it’s a combination of both (1) the distance from the population center and (2) that at the relevant time of day, St. Pete to Tampa would be an easier trip than Tampa to St. Pete.
Looking at another major sports franchise in that market, the Lightning play in an arena in Tampa and seem to draw well relative to both arena capacity and other NHL teams. (Seventh highest NHL home attendance in the 2015-16 season, for example.) The Lightning have had more overall success than the Rays, but the Rays’ attendance was under 2 million every year even during the 2008-2013 time period when the Rays had a winning record every season and went to the playoffs four times.
So it sounds like light rail might address some of the issue, and moving to Tampa might address more of the issue. The ideal would be a stadium in Tampa with light rail but that would cost a ton of money.
Looking at the geography of the area, the bay itself creates a big transportation problem and its usually expensive to impose a light rail system on already existing system. The only easy options I can see are a NS coastal line and an EW line along the north side of the bay – which would mean Clearwater as the entertainment center.
MacDill AFB looks like it has the best location for a completely new development lt rail connecting Tampa and St Pete with road/bridge east to Apollo. But it looks like McDill’s existence has eliminated pop growth on that peninsula and east side of bay
Very interesting and well written article. I visited Tampa a few years ago and saw a game there vs Burch Smith and the Padres (and coincidently had a post game concert). There was a relatively large crowd (over 30k if memory serves) and they were pretty fired up after Longoria hit a walk off homer. While they set up the field for the concert which was Kenny Loggins (a somewhat odd choice) many fans were yelling “play Danger Zone”. The lights came down and they played a strange career retrospective video on Loggins that seemed like a memorial. He then came on stage (to more yells from Rays fans of “play Danger Zooooooooone”). Loggins (with apparently no sense of the vibe from the crowd) proceeded to open with a ballad. The Rays fans seemed confused but patiently waited, gave polite applause and yelled “Danger Zoooooooone” which sounded more desperate than excited at this point. Another ballad followed and a quarter of the crowd departed. After a long dull story about writing ballads, Loggins played two more ballads. A larger mass of people departed including me. From Twitter, i read that he kicked into Danger Zone about 3 songs from the finale. After Danger Zone about 1500 fans remained according to those who stayed.
Burch Smith and the Padres would be a great name for a band. Especially one that does post game concerts.
A singularly appropriate comment by A Flock of Seagers. 🙂
Whatever. You can joke about Burch Smith and the Padres. But I’m a Padres fan who remembers watching him pitch. It wasn’t funny. Also I prefer Burch Smith and the Swingin’ Friars.
Ballads are his personal Danger Zone.
The TV Numbers are fantastic, some of the best in the league when normalized for population. The current TV deal is a pos. Once the new one is done things will change.
Going across the bridges at rush hour is the only way to make the 7pm starts and that is hell on earth, so most people dont do it. Not only is game traffic going across 3 bridges, but all the workers who commute to Tampa (ALOT more people commmute to Tampa for work than the other direction)are also crossing the only 3 bridges.
That’s a good point. Thanks for bringing that up.
Interesting stuff here, I’d love to see similar pieces on other teams too.
Enjoyed the read
I doubt Tampa will be able to figure this out. A town with money is like a mule with a spinning wheel. No one knows how he got it and danged if he knows how to use it!
Great reference. Mono-d’oh!
Ironically, a monorail to Tropicana would actually solve the problem
It put Brockway, Ogdenville, and North Haverbrook on the map!
But not that particular monorail. It was a piece of crap.
I call the big one Bitey.
Not to put too fine a point on it, another limitation of the Tampa Bay market is that it is the most downscale market in the majors, with the lowest median household income among all American major league metro areas. Miami is third from the bottom, which might help explain their poor attendance as well. (There are other factors, of course.)
Pittsburgh is second from bottom, and even with arguably the most beautiful stadium in the majors located right smack downtown, their attendance was always still in the bottom half even when they were making the playoffs three years running.
So, even if someone, whether team or taxpayers, funded a new billion dollar dome in a more accessible part of the market, you’d still be having to deal with a fan base that can afford going to games far less than in other cities.
Not to mention Pinellas is full of retirees on fixed incomes. so not only is the stadium away from the population, its surround by poor / elderly people
Yep. More than 30% of the Tampa Bay population is over 55. That compares with only 18% at a similar small market team in Kansas City.
This isn’t relevant to this article, but I was watching some of the Pirates-Dbacks game on Wednesday. It ended up going almost 5 hours thanks to 14 innings and also a rain delay (it POURED) in I think the 9th or 10th inning. Between the extra innings, the mammoth rain storm and the Penguins game that night, there was NOBODY left in the stands at the end. It literally could not have been more than 200 people in the entire stadium. The DBacks broadcast backed out to a wide angle shot a few times and I’m fairly certain I personally have never seen a stadium that empty while a game was going on.
It happens… A few years ago I was at an Indians@White Sox game that got delayed several hours due to rain, and there was still a light rain even after the game finally started. There were also only a few hundred people in the stadium for that one. It was a very surreal and weird experience. My wife & I wandered around, watching from behind each dugout, home plate, etc. You could hear the players on the field talking to each other, and some hecklers even got reactions from the players because it was so quiet. We also got to be on the Jumbotron because, well, there was nobody else to put up there. Haha.
There was definitely one game with fewer fans.
http://www.espn.com/sportsnation/post/_/id/12787676/the-baseball-game-no-fans
Well written, as an area resident let me summarize the reasons for poor attendance, in order of importance. Some other commentators have hit on these issues as well.
1. Crappy stadium. Built in 1986, this masoleum is sterile and uninviting. While a new stadium is not a ‘silver bullet’, there is no doubt a new one is needed. it DOES NOT need to be a dome (please god no) and in fact I don’t believe even needs a retractable roof – maybe for the rain…but the heat is the heat, I think people like being ‘outside’ that go to games anyway, though shade for day games would be mandatory I guess.
2. Location. I love St. Pete, but obviously the stadium fits in Tampa, and downtown Tampa preferably.
….both of these are ‘solvable’ by the Rays, MLB and City council.
3. Congestion. Get a great stadium, put it in downtown Tampa, attendance will improve and you’ll get better sponsorship from companies. The ‘high end’ would go up, and in fact the stadium should be built to somewhat cater to this area because…the average fan will still have trouble going. Without light rail across the Bay and in the area, a 20 minute ‘drive’ for me at 5:30 from St. Pete to downtown Tampa would be 90 minutes including time to park and walk to stadium. It’s a lot of stress and the games aren’t ‘cheap’ anymore and won’t be in a new stadium. This is a problem all over the south, including Miami.
4. Better team – last on the list, a better team would help, and regardless of what others are saying the Rays get enough in revenue sharing and TV deal (which will improve shortly) to pay out more $$ selectively.
1 & 2 lead to 200,000-300,000 better attendance, #3 leads to 300,000-500,000 better attendance and 4 leads to another 200,000-400,000. 1, 2 & 3 would help 4 as well ie. new stadium, public transporation and more fans at games = more $$ for team to spend. It’s not a HUGE market like NY or BOS, but 1.75 or 2m should be attendance floor.
Agree with most everything but the retractable roof. It’s not the heat. It’s the thunder and lightning. The trop has lost power twice in the hundred or so games (due to lightning strikes) I’ve been to over the past 10 years. And I can’t count how many more occasions included massive thunderstorms. The Rays are already the slowest paced team in the majors this year. Do we really want to increase the length of their games even more through weather delays?!?!
You’re going to need a retractable roof for a stadium in Tampa. I’m only a visiting team fan of the Jays, but there’s been a number of times where we’ve been there and they’ve shown the outside, and it basically looked like The Reckoning had come or something.
https://youtu.be/4Ix7co3Icug?t=45s
Like this one, for example. If there’d been no roof there, it would have flooded the entire stadium and the game would have been cancelled.
The Hamilton Ra—Expos has a ring to it.
Hamilton? You know what that’d be like, right? It’d be like that team was the Islanders and the Jays are the Rangers. Or the Hamilton Clippers (first 30 yrs) and the Toronto Lakers.
Put the team in Montreal where it belongs. Build the damn stadium in the place it should obviously go, and people will go back. Montrealers sure miss their team. It was the owner and situation that drove them away, not any hatred of baseball.
Las Vegas Rays?
Not sure if this has been taken into account, but I am pretty sure that the Rays have suppressed attendance counts by using actual attendance instead of tickets sold. I could not find anything directly on the subject, but this is a more general article about the manipulation of the data http://www.latimes.com/la-sp-attendance-082305-story.html.
Also, I don’t think the subject is nearly as complicated as demographics/economics/etc. make it out to seem, I believe it’s cause is obvious through 7th grade geometry. If you draw a 10-mile radius around the Trop, 70% of the area within the circle would be water, whereas if you built it in Tampa, it would be something like half that amount (rough approximations on the numbers here, don’t have time to get quantify this). The difference in the green/blue ratio on a map will show why the location is terrible.
All that being said, as a Tampa resident, keep them inside! We need a dome and 72 degree weather. The AC and 10 dollar tickets might be the biggest attractions for baseball fans during the summer.
Wait, so suburban car culture ISN’T conducive to sustained economic success?
Solution to Rays problems: Finally replace cars with government owned magnetic pulse pods and remove the smog AND congestion in one blow!
It should be mentioned that the goal of the team is to make money, not have increased attendance. The Rays are pitting Pinellas and Hillsborough Counties against one another to get the sweetest deal from taxpayers. Attendance is a secondary concern. In addition to your blog, one should also read Shadow of the Stadium and Field of Schemes to truly understand the numbers behind stadiums, subsidies, etc.
“Field of Schemes”, lol. Great title!
Sports and Florida are not a great combination outside of spring training, which makes for a good vacation. I thought that was just common knowledge. People don’t travel to Florida to go to sporting events. Southern California has the same general issue, but LA has proven that it can support one team – they have also proven that they can’t support a second. Many great sports towns are places like Green Bay or even Seattle, where there are not so many things to do or great weather to enjoy.
Have you been to Seattle? Not much to do? Not good weather in the summer?
As someone not in Seattle, I really wish I could be there (well, Vancouver) instead of anywhere else for weather related purposes at the very least.
Maybe it’s due to climate change but in the last couple years the weather in the summer has been great in Seattle. I think the avg temperature in the summer is around 64F. Not too hot and not too cold.
LA can support one team but not two? Dodgers drew the most in the NL while the Angels were 3rd last year in the AL. Year before they were #1, and #2 respectively.
Maybe you are talking about Football or maybe you don’t consider the two teams to be in the same market (they are separated by 30 miles and about 45 minutes with light traffic).
And yeah … your comment about Seattle is just bizarre. They are a middle of the pack draw in baseball AND there is a ton of things to do in the area.
There might be a lot to do in Seattle but it is limited to be indoors most the time…rains more than half the year. Las Vegas is the city MLB is looking at, they might wait till after the NBA follows suit of the NHL and NFL, but all 4 major sports league will be here in Vegas before too long.
Las Vegas is a small market in terms of actual residents, which is why the 51s had the fifth worst attendance in all of AAA last season. Tourists can fill up 8 NFL games, but won’t amount to nearly enough for 81 baseball games.
I’ll disagree with you for two reasons. do you live here? Cashman field is in a horrible part of the city and on dollar beer night someone always gets stabbed or beaten nearly to death. every week. and its freaking Vegas there is a million things to do besides AAA baseball.
At least 13 cities that are home to MLB teams have higher average rainfall totals than Seattle. This include Boston, NY, St Louis, KC, and Houston.
Seattle’s reputation as a rainy city is entirely earned during the winter months. Also known as the off season.
Doesn’t surprise me that Kansas City has a higher annual rainfall total – but I bet that rain falls in less than 1/4 of the time it falls in Seattle. Seems like it drops about 1-1/2″ in an hour, and then it stops for two days, with both days being entirely playable.
that is interesting because I used to live in Northern Oregon and it always rained. Always.
“There might be a lot to do in Seattle but it is limited to be indoors most the time”
I live in Seattle and in the summer the sun stays up til 9pm and there’s plenty of activities going on. In the winter it’s kinda dead. If you go to a bar area, by the time it’s 1am you will not see many people on the streets.
Seattle is the perfect place to retire and raise kids.
The Dodgers have historically lead mlb in attendance and for decades were head and shoulders ahead of everyone else. They put deep roots into southern California immediately, especially with the Hispanic community (see Jarrin, Jaime).
That the Dodgers dominate the market doesn’t mean it cant support the angels. They do quite well by all standards except the Dodgers’
I don’t wish the Rays to move – they are one of my favorite teams – but there’s a huge (and quickly growing) market in Austin/San Antonio. Over 4.5 million in market size – probably 5+ million within 5 years. A park somewhere between Austin and San Antonio would only be about 1/2 hour from each city.
Hope they can find a way to stay in TB. Maybe the A’s are the most likely to move.
If we’re hoping a city gets a team, I vote for Montreal.
I vote for Montreal only if they change the team name to Expos
I don’t think that it’s realistic to try to draw a lot of game attendance from both San Antonio and Austin. That 30 minutes from each is optimistic under the best of circumstances: downtown Austin and downtown San Antonio are about 75 miles apart. And traveling to a weekday evening baseball game wouldn’t be the best of circumstances, because I-35 already has a lot of traffic in and between the two cities. Someone traveling to a night baseball game from either city would get caught up in outbound commuter traffic congestion.
Another problem with putting a stadium between the two cities is that the area between Austin and San Antonio don’t have all that many people. The two counties in between (Hays and Comal) are growing but have a combined population of only about 320,000 people. That stadium location would be huge bet that a lot of people in the two metros will regularly travel a fairly long distance to a game, because the number of people living or working within a 10 to 15 mile radius of that stadium would almost certainly be the lowest total of any major league team.
The two metros combined should be a large TV market for a well-marketed MLB team located in either San Antonio or Austin. That also highlights one big issue, however, as the Rangers and Astros would almost certainly fight a team locating in San Antonio or Austin because of the negative implications for those teams’ respective cable TV contracts. Living in Austin, for example, my cable package currently includes Rangers games on Fox Sports Southwest.
I do think that an NFL team with a well-located stadium – on the north side of San Antonio, for example – could probably draw healthy game attendance from both metros. That’s for 8 home games that are mostly on Sunday’s, however. I don’t see people routinely traveling so long for the much greater number of baseball games.
In 2014, the Rays were coming off a 92 win, wild card (super wild) winning season. It is well known that previous season success leads to higher season ticket sales and that is a big part of attendance. In 2015, the Rays weren’t all that good, and they weren’t coming off a good year either, so it is not surprising at all that their attendance dipped. That would likely happen to any team with that trajectory.
This is an exceptional series.
While I’m a strong supporter of dense urban city center ballparks, a suburban ballpark can work — just have a look at Angels Stadium, or The Ballpark at Arlington. As long as the ballpark’s location is centrally located and driveable from many directions, a suburban ballpark can function.
The main issue is that compared to Arlington (which is (somewhat) driveable from anywhere in DFW), you need to painfully cross one of four bridges to get to Tropicana.
While the most ideal location for a new ballpark is probably downtown Tampa, it doesn’t have to be there. A park further to the north (by Steinbrenner Field or where the Bucaneers play) can also work as a gathering point, though one may not be able to get as many government stadium handouts up there.
PS. The Phillies’ Spring Training home in Clearwater is beautiful, and an example of how baseball can work in the Tampa Bay Area.
Great article, great discussion, too. My parents retired to St. Pete back in the day, and my dad made himself very unpopular on local sports talk radio in the 1980s by making the same points people have made in this discussion thread: the median income in the area is too low and there is too high a percentage of retirees on a fixed income to make an MLB team a viable. I think putting a good stadium in Tampa would work–on paper, at least: it would have to be strategically located to make travel and parking easy; and I agree that you need a dome or a retractable roof: often it rains hard every evening, and the lightning can get intense. What would be the upside to putting a park in one of the smaller cities in the region–Clearwater, for instance? If the owners want to stay there, they need to think outside the box and get creative.
You get mad props just for reminding me that Dewon Brazelton existed
Location and underwhelming stadium are definitely the core issues. A new state of the art stadium is a must, but if the location isn’t moved to the center of population density, then the transportation problems have to be solved (i.e. light rail, more bridges, flying cars, something).
Big media has given us bad wraps before based upon opposing teams colors in our stadiums, and I can’t stand hearing that crap. No one can stop people from moving to FL, and no one can stop people from buying tickets to see their favorite teams play when they come to FL. Additionally, no one moves from FL to go be miserable in a freezing cold northern city. Ever heard the saying “we live where you vacation?” This imbalance of hundreds of thousands of more people moving from other states (with prior team allegiances) to FL, is obviously going to result in a lot of people willing to pay to go see their team that comes to FL once a year. One of my biggest pet peeves.
Hopefully the Rays move to Tampa soon. Otherwise, they will be in Montreal by 2020.
Portland Rays
How would the realignment work with that one?
I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Portland A’s at some point.
This is good. Thanks, Mike.
Bah. Amateur fans.
Signed,
Dodger fan
“The Tampa Bay Rays fans’ attendance is not well correlated with any factors: performance, payroll, or ticket prices.” – Ben Langhorst, “What Do Your Fans Want? Attendance Correlations with Performance, Ticket Prices, and Payroll Factors”
http://sabr.org/research/what-do-your-fans-want-attendance-correlations-performance-ticket-prices-and-payroll-factor
Interesting stuff; I would read more on this topic. But I’m surprised by your comment about their 2015 attendance — “with more wins did not come more tickets sold, which seems to run counter to convention.”
Firstly, you can’t expect attendance to care about rising from 77 to 80 wins. It’s still a non-contending year, the second straight after a run of much better years. It’s not moving the needle.
More importantly, attendance often lags a year behind performance. They made the playoffs in 2013, so despite a poor 2014 from the get-go, attendance mostly held up. But that poor year plus Maddon’s leaving caused low expectations and low advance sale for 2015. And although they began fairly well, they were out of the race by late July, which is the time when improved play might cause a same-season gate boost.
All in all, their 2015 attendance decline seems predictable. They drew what the Rays tend to draw when they’re not expected to contend, and then don’t.
I know it was just one tangential remark, well away from the article’s focus. But to this reader, it hurt your credibility just a bit for writing on attendance issues.
Welcome in the FG community, nice article. Btw why are all the fg writers fans of sideshow teams like Seattle, Pittsburgh or tampa?:)
I want the Rays to stay in the area but remain pessimistic about the attendance. I haven’t studied the issue as many have, but want to note one point not mentioned. There is an advanced A league in Florida, and it has generally had the worst attendance of any full season league in baseball, and in some cases even worse average (or even total) attendance than some short season leagues. (I haven’t looked at this in the last couple of years, but did for a few consecutive seasons not long ago.)
Perhaps this coincidence is unrelated to the problem, but it is baseball, and few of the issues raised to explain poor major league attendance relate to it. There are some very nice stadiums in the league, traffic and expense should not be a problem and the population density is not less than that of teams in other leagues. So if fans are not attending those games, perhaps the area is simply not going to support professional baseball.
Move them to Montreal. Enough said.
Thanks – very interesting article. This is my 3rd try as a Rays season ticket holder (99-00, 08-11, 17 – ?). I live in Tampa and I can get to my seat at a Lighting game from my house in 30 minutes, Bucs in 25 but 1:15 for the Rays…Personally, I don’t feel current ownership has the commitment they once had to the team. I feel they are sitting on their cash/equity growth and will aggressively shop our Rays as the St Pete lease winds down and they gain more and more leverage. I look forward to the series.
My thoughts. Build a retractable roof stadium in the down town Tampa area. Plow the Tropicana dome, but save the parking lot. Use this parking lot as a way to get St. Pete and Manatee County fans to the games via large ferry boats. Multiple boats, each with an entertainment plan. Maybe one is a Casino boat or another could be a “party” boat, etc.
Connect Orlando on a light rail through Lakeland. Continue the rail to the beaches, maybe Clearwater.
It’s time to move the Rays to Montreal. Expos fans have waited long enough for the return of their team. Thirteen years and counting, to be exact.
Canada has 36 million people and only one MLB team. The Montreal-Toronto rivalry would be one of the best in baseball!
Could the issue of rush hour traffic be solved by a change in time for games? Would more fans show up for an 8 PM game instead of 7? If nothing else, would that stagger traffic by an hour, and make life easier on everyone?
maybe.some good surveying at games would likely answer this. I think it would be difficult to accomplish with the tv contract & then it brings up a new issue of games ending too late on wk nights to have working ppl and families there.this is a issue in oakland as well where traffic in the bay area has increased to be just as bad as l.a. we have transit that drops you right at the stadium but im not sure whats worse these days, a 45 min. drive to take you 15 miles at 6pmor hoping on bart and standing in a grossly overcrowded train with someone breathing on your neck the entire time bc at rush hour theres no way youd get a seat after 2 stops.
I think that Don’t Litter hit the nail on the head that 8 pm or later game starts just trade out the rush hour traffic problem for the problem of games ending later than most people prefer, particularly on work/school nights.
The Rays cannot expect to prosper by staying in St. Pete. They must move to the Tampa side of the Bay. Though even that move doesn’t guarantee a successful fan base, since Florida is full of transplants and loyal fans don’t give up the team they grew up with easily.
The Marlins are dealing with a similar problem in Miami and neither team draws much more than flies on a weekday evening. If MLB wanted to get creative and help the teams find more success at the ticket window, they could move one of the teams out of Florida and allow the other to play half their home games in Tampa and half in Miami. This would cause an artificial shortage of tickets by playing fewer games in each city.
The other Florida team could move to Montreal, Mexico City or any city that could support an MLB franchise with more than 7K fans on a Tuesday night.
This topic interested me as well when it was written about a year ago. Using Geographic Information Systems I subsequently built a “Map Journal” of each MLB team and their approximate 30 minute drive time distances. Maps are here: http://arcg.is/2hetI5u
once I wrote a research paper on visibility of sports stadia as a urban development/ redevelopment tool. the single sport where it can work is baseball by the long nature of the season and getting 82+ game dates at a site. urban stadiums work best bc of the factors mentioned, proximity & some transit access.having a stadium closer to ppl where they live/work is the single easiest way to ensure a higher attendance. im not familiar with tampas geography but it sounds like the location isnt ideal & its too late to bother worrying about. the stadium is where it is.football works fine in a suburb bc its 8games on a sunday where ppl wont mind a lil driving bc theyre not rushing from work in gridlock.
transit can help but in florida is there really taxpayer/political support for that especially if it can be viewed as a subsidy for a crap team? probly not.
I see alot of similarities bw tampa bay & oakland my home team. crap team on field, no investment in winning or retaining talent. old stadium thats not downtown, we do have transit here that drops you right at the gate so thats an advantage, especially bc traffic here in last few years has gotten as bad as l.a. I live maybe 20mi. from coliseum which might take me an hour + by car at 6pm & bart is so overcrowded at rushour its impossible to get a seat, youre getting breathed on and bumped and hearing 3 diff. rap beats from 3 diff. scraper kids earphones simultaneously, taking transits almost worse.
another problem is that real wages adjusted for inflation in this country for most ppl have been declining since 1975 & shits just not as affordable. this will only get worse for least another 4yrs, but I guess floridians dont mind the reallocation of their buying power to the richest 10%, and corporations based on the states political pref.
the A’s recently lowered prices & offer a pass for a months worth of games in the 2nd deck outfield that pays for itself after 3 games. great idea since they get like 10k, maybe, on a wk night in a 60k capacity venue. however about 5yrs late.
that brings me to another similarity in that tampas fans like As fans ,at least myself are likely checked out after long periods of irrelevancy. I used to attend 20-30 games a year & id maybe take advantage of cheaper tickets & concessions if I hadnt made up my mind im not giving any $ to a team/owner that doesnt want to win. I dont care about the aging concrete stadium, it fits like an old shoe.its all ive known. im almost 30 though and theres a generation of A’s fans that grew up and all their fav. players back to mark mcgwire were traded away. I suspect thats an issue. then again I hear all florida sports teams ie dolphins have attendance problems so maybe its just not a sports town. if I owned the rays id be trying to take them to cuba or the d.r. where theres diff. problems but in right conditions attendance issues could be overcome.
Up,Up,and Away,paging Mr.J.Kerr.