MLB drew a total attendance of 110,737 for the July 8-12 All-Star Game FanFest in Phoenix, down 6.5% from the 118,429 attending last year's interactive baseball fan festival in Anaheim. This year's number is surprising as the league and host club the D'Backs began selling tickets in February, earlier than normal and deliberately timed to market to fans attending nearby Cactus League Spring Training camps. And by April, club officials said in excess of 90,000 FanFest tickets had been pre-sold, leading to widespread projections that last year's figure would be surpassed. But the event appeared to have minimal amounts of walk-up ticket sales last week. Combined with the Futures Game, Home Run Derby and All-Star Game itself at Chase Field, MLB and the D'Backs sold a total of 240,608 tickets to All-Star events in Phoenix, up 1% from last year's total ticket sales of 237,909 in Anaheim. This year's total was boosted by the larger seating capacity of Chase Field, and a historically strong turnout of more than 37,000 for the July 10 Futures Game.
