[Baltimore Sun] More fans are flocking to Camden Yards this year. So why is Orioles attendance still below MLB average?
Read Time:9 Minute, 23 Second
The enigma of Orioles attendance this season can be illustrated through two Tuesdays.
The first was June 25 against the Cleveland Guardians when a game between two of baseball’s four best teams brought in about 18,500 fans. The second was Tuesday versus the Cubs when more than 30,000 fans (some in Chicago blue) braved the oppressive heat at Camden Yards.
The former was one of the least-attended games in Major League Baseball that night. The latter was the best-attended Tuesday game in Baltimore since 2015.
Two facts that seem counter to each other can help sum up Orioles attendance this season: It has increased significantly, yet it’s still below average. Attendance is up 27% at Camden Yards so far in 2024 for the largest uptick in MLB, but the Orioles still only rank 19th out of 30 teams despite spending the past two years as one of the American League’s best ballclubs.
T.J. Brightman, the Orioles’ senior vice president and chief revenue officer, said the increase has “met expectations” coming off the team’s 101-win season and continued success this year.
“We’re pleased with the numbers,” he said. “We always want to achieve more and see even more sellouts, but our team’s on a good path right now.”
The complexities of attendance can cause differences like the two Tuesdays, considered the worst day for attendance in MLB. The game against the Guardians did not feature a giveaway like the beach towel promotion for the contest versus the Cubs. Other factors like weather, interest from fans of the opposing team and other events in town can cause fluctuations.
But there are plenty of other examples. The Orioles’ three-game weekend series against the Philadelphia Phillies last month drew 133,067. All three were sellouts, and many in attendance cheered for the road team. The last time that many fans attended a three-game series at Oriole Park was in July 2015. However, two weekends later, nearly 10,000 fewer fans walked through the gates for Baltimore’s four-game series against the defending World Series champion Texas Rangers, including 23,439 for “Sunday Night Baseball” — only the second time the club has hosted baseball’s primetime broadcast since 2019.
Despite its vagaries, attendance is still a vital metric to track when assessing a fan base, according to Mike Lewis, a professor of marketing at Emory University who has studied fandom for nearly 20 years.
“In baseball, the health of the fan base is directly related to the attendance,” Lewis said. “The fans are everything — they’re the reason the sponsors are putting up that signage in the ballpark. Attendance, to me, it’s the absolute key metric.”
The Orioles entered Thursday with an average attendance of 27,261 through 48 home games — up about 3,300 from last year — and that will likely grow after this weekend’s series against the rival New York Yankees. The growth is even larger — about 6,000 more fans per game for a 27% increase — when comparing through this point of the season. No team in MLB has seen a larger uptick in attendance so far this year. The only club close to Baltimore’s improvement is the Arizona Diamondbacks, who went on a shocking run in October to make the World Series, with a 26% increase.
Manager Brandon Hyde remembers the dog days of the rebuild when only a few thousand fans watched his oftentimes hapless club spend three years as the AL’s worst team. It’s made him appreciate what’s going on at Camden Yards now even more.
“To have people support us, the fans and the area support us the way they are, it’s a noticeable difference,” Hyde said.
The Orioles are on pace to draw between 2.21 million and 2.47 million fans this season. The last time the club eclipsed 2.21 million was 2015, while 2.47 million would be the Orioles’ highest since 2005. The median attendance in MLB last season was 2.54 million.
“And as the team continues to play well and hopefully go further into the postseason, the attendance will also continue to increase,” Brightman said. “This is a baseball town, and we think the best days for Birdland are ahead of us.”
The days of Oriole Park drawing north of 40,000 fans per game and over 3.5 million for the season, as it did in the ballpark’s first few years, , are almost certainly gone given the changes in attendance across MLB. The Orioles, aren’t just competing with the Ravens and the Washington Nationals, but also with YouTube and TikTok and anything else that can keep people on their phones and away from the yard.
A whiteboard in the Orioles clubhouse shows attendance for the June 26 game against the Guardians, as well as the overall attendance for the season. (Kevin Richardson/Staff)
However, ranking 19th in MLB — a few thousand below the median per-game attendance of approximately 30,000 — means the Orioles have plenty of room to grow.
“I don’t think it’s a question of us getting caught up in where we rank with the rest of the league. It’s more about getting back to levels that this ballpark has seen in the past,” Brightman said. “I do believe the club, as we continue to play well, will see attendance approaching levels that push us well over 2.5 million fans per season.”
In April, when attendance was also up 27%, new Orioles owner David Rubenstein remarked during an event in Washington about how attendance hadn’t jumped as much as he hoped.
“Even though we’ve got a great new owner of the team,” Rubenstein joked, “and Cal Ripken back, we haven’t been able to dramatically increase attendance. Obviously, it’s early in the season.”
Brightman said improving attendance “takes time,” and the data for most MLB teams backs that up, especially for rebuilding clubs. Attendance tends to lag, meaning fans respond more the year after a club’s first season of success than during it. After last year’s stellar campaign, which included the club’s first AL East title since 2014, Brightman said reserved season-ticket packages have increased 35% year over year.
Scott Smith, a 64-year-old Eldersburg resident, said he can tell attendance is up this year, especially compared with the rebuild. Wednesday was his fourth Orioles game this season, and the team’s success is why he’s coming to Camden Yards more now.
“Your expectations are so different now,” Smith said. “Years ago, I don’t know if I could’ve watched them past May. Now, you expect ‘em to win every night.”
The Orioles ranked in the bottom seven of attendance every year from 2018 to 2022 (not counting the pandemic-shortened 2020 campaign). It hit rock bottom in 2019, the first full season of the rebuild when the Orioles drew 1.3 million fans to rank 28th in MLB. But as the club emerged from the rebuild to make the playoffs for the first time since 2016, Baltimore fans responded in kind with a 41.5% increase in attendance, although part of that figure is because of the pandemic ending.
Lewis said the Orioles are in the stage of building back “fan equity.” After years of intentionally putting an uncompetitive product on the field, he agrees that it will take time for attendance to match the standings. But what makes Orioles attendance difficult to project is that their turnaround — 52 wins in 2021 to 83 in 2022 to 101 in 2023 — is unprecedented for the modern game.
“Those years of losing 100 games back to back, that’s truly amazing, and I would think the Orioles are on kind of dangerous ground,” Lewis said. “But now what they’ve done is historic. … I can’t think of an example where a team has done that and then done this, so we’re in a little bit of uncharted territory.”
Of course, there are external factors that impact the Orioles specifically, such as the Montreal Expos moving to nearby Washington to become the Nationals in 2005, cutting into the club’s market share. Additionally, Baltimore is one of the smaller markets in MLB.
“We haven’t shied away from this: We play in a smaller market. There’s competition to the south,” Brightman said. “But we focus on our ballclub and what we think we can do.”
However, being a small-market team does not automatically equal below-average attendance. While most of the 17 teams ahead of the Orioles this season reside in larger markets like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, there are a few teams in areas smaller than Baltimore with attendance much better. The Milwaukee Brewers, an organization that former Orioles Chairman and CEO John Angelos once used as a comparison to Baltimore, is averaging more than 30,000 fans per game. The San Diego Padres, who play in a media market that Nielsen rates 30th in the U.S., one spot below Baltimore, are fourth in attendance at just over 40,000 fans per contest.
One philosophical difference between the Padres and the Orioles is their payrolls. Despite being in a smaller market, the Padres are one of MLB’s highest-spending teams with a payroll of $248.3 million that ranks third in the sport, according to Cot’s Baseball Contracts. The Orioles, as a result of the rebuild they chose to go through, have ranked in the bottom five in six straight seasons, including 26th this year at $94.9 million as Adley Rutschman, Gunnar Henderson, Jordan Westburg and most of the club’s young core are still years away from free agency.
“There’s a very strong positive correlation between spending on payroll and winning and attendance,” Lewis said. “You spend and generally you’re going to win — you’re not always going to win — but then the attendance comes.”
Smith said he normally attends games that include a promotion, but he said increased costs — from parking to tickets to concessions — make it a challenge to spend as much time at Oriole Park as he’d like. “The price of stuff is getting to the point where enough’s enough,” he said.
But there is one way Smith believes the Orioles can get even more fans out to the yard in the future.
“Get some of these guys signed to long-term contracts,” he said.
A sold-out crowd watched the Orioles take on the Phillies at Camden Yards on June 16. (Karl Merton Ferron/Staff)
Happy
0 %
Sad
0 %
Excited
0 %
Sleepy
0 %
Angry
0 %
Surprise
0 %
0
0