Baseball is a 162 game sprint, every season between April and September. At the end of the sprint is the World Series. Over that period MLB teams make money several ways. Among the most important of those is attendance. Only one team in the major leagues has drawn fewer than 10,000 fans a game this year. To compare, the average number of fans going to a baseball game is 25,000.
The Miami Marlins have brought in only 274,883 fans to Marlins Park through 29 games. That means home attendance per game has only been 9,478. The next lowest team on the list is the Tampa Bay Rays at 13,731 through 28 games. At the top of the list, the Los Angeles Dodgers have drawn an average of 46,893 through 29 games, nearly five times the Marlin’s attendance. Ironically, Miami is among the best cities for sports fans.
At the top of the list of the Marlin’s problems is their record. The team sits in last place in the National League East. It has won 19 games and lost 25. With that record, the team is 13 games behind the division leading Philadelphia Phillies.
The win-loss record is also among the worst in all of baseball. At one point of the season, there was a chance they would end the season with the worst record in history. Miami’s problem is part of a plague across much of the league. According to The New York Post: Baltimore, Cincinnati, Minnesota and Tampa Bay set stadium lows this year. Kansas City had its smallest home crowd since 2011 and Toronto and San Francisco since 2010. The Marlins’ average attendance is less than Triple-A Las Vegas. Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred’s explanation, in part, is that people have many other alternatives for entertainment.
The fact that the Marlins attendance problem is part of a trend has to be cold comfort to team owners, which include former New York Yankees great Derek Jeter. The Marlin’s continue to be one of the hardest American sports teams to work for.
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