If You Win it, They Will Come: Attendance Up through May

Since the days of daily sell outs, the early months of the seasons have been a rough spot for the Tribe in terms of attendance. Since 2007, they have averaged 4,234 fewer fans during April games than the overall per game average over those years and 1,403 fewer during May games. This is largely due to the weather as, separate from month, fans don’t show up for games when it’s too cold or too hot. The chart below shows the complete breakdown by temperature range from 2007 through 2016.

The Indians expected an increase in attendance this year, not only because of the hypothetical World Series bump, but due to an actual increase in season ticket holder sales. By raising the base number of tickets sold to every game, the overall attendance is less influenced by walk up numbers, the primary portion of attendees that are effected by temperature.

With that increased base, the Indians lowest attended home game this year was on April 27th at 14,452 with only four total games below 15,000. Last year, 14 of 24 April and May games were attended by less than 15,000 (15 of 25 if you include June 1st) with a maximum non-opening day crowd of 21,110. If you remove opening day, they averaged just 14,224 in for April and May in 2016 largely held down by six games below 11,000 including one under 9,000. The Rubberducks averaged 5,074 fans per game last year for the entire season. The Indians had a game where 8,766 show up. The 2017 season was the first for the Indians since 2010 when they didn’t have an April or May game where attendance dipped below 10,000, a number unthinkable in the early days of Jacobs Field.

It would appear, these embarrassing days are over thanks to that increased season ticket holder base. With that, the Indians were able to sustain a 47° on April 29th as over 21,000 fans arrived. It helped that this was a Saturday, but even the extremely cold days during the week, like when it hit 43° by first pitch on April 20th and 17,339 attended, there were more for the single coldest game of the season (and a Thursday game against the Twins at that) than the average for the first two months in 2016.

So, in essence, the Indians have increased their floor and average, but they’ve also increased their ceiling and the frequency of nearing that ceiling. Two games against Detroit in mid-April brought in over 50,000 fans combined, then two weekend series (six straight home games) averaged over 23,000 per games against the Mariners and Twins. Memorial Day weekend raised the roof again as the Indians first fireworks show of 2017 brought in 29,603, but it might not have just been the pyrotechnic display as they beat that number the next night with no promotions. Overall, it was a great month for Tribe attendance as the team averaged 20,719 per game.

While this number may seem unimpressive compared to the days of 45,000+, this is a new age. Only three teams are averaging more than 40,000 per game this year and the Indians can no longer physically fit that many into the stadium. At any rate, Cleveland is no longer last in the league in average attendance, surpassing Tampa, Miami and Oakland. While improved weather should help nearly every team increase attendance in June (except the Rangers essentially), it generally has a big effect in Cleveland and it wouldn’t be surprising at all to see them climb these charts a bit and possibly move out of the bottom third of baseball teams.

Rather than compare to the rest of the country, however, it’s important to note the local improvements. By averaging more than 20k per game, the Indians have done better in what are generally their worst two months of the season than they’ve done in total since 2011. That’s right, the Indians haven’t averaged more than 20,000 fans per game for a season since 2011.

In addition, there should be expected a boost as the season progresses. Last year, despite the poor start in attendance, the Indians had 19 games of 25,000 or more from June through the end of the year and never had another game below 11,000. With the base raised, the Indians will likely not have a game below 14,000 this year and should expect quite a few more of those sell outs or near sell outs. There’s no question that the team’s success had something to do with the late season attendance spike and now they have the benefit of not just contending, but proof that they can go all the way.

As it stands, the Indians project to about 1.7M fans this year, but we already know that they should greatly exceed that number. Should they surpass 2M, not only will Edwin Encarnacion make $150K, but it would be the greatest number of fans to enter Progressive Field since 2008, when it was named Progressive Field. If Edwin gets his third $150K bonus (at 2.5M fans), it would be the most attended season since 2002.

While the Indians have been contenders since Terry Francona took over, they were missing the support structure. With the increased attendance early in 2017 as well as the surprising takeover of the All-Star ballot by all nine Indians options (even Abraham Almonte), it appears that the support for Cleveland baseball has finally returned. It was a long drought, but thanks to a World Series appearance and five straight years of Central Division contention, it appears to be ending.