Nationals Revenue From Attendance In New Park May Double '07
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New Ballpark Giving Nationals Boost In
Average Attendance So Far This Season |
The Nationals are averaging 30,347 fans per game at the new Nationals Park for 12 games through Monday, a 45.3% increase from a 20,887 average for 13 games through the same date last year at RFK Stadium. The Nationals finished last season with an average of 24,217, down from 26,582 fans in ’06 and 33,708 fans in ’05, their first season in DC (THE DAILY). In DC, Thomas Boswell reports the team's revenue from attendance "may actually double this season." Early fears of "poor attendance, terrible parking, traffic snarls and Metro delays turned out to have been overblown." Traffic flow around the ballpark is "generally smooth," and parking is "so much better than expected that hundreds of spaces in lots within a couple of blocks of the park now sit empty every night." Nationals President Stan Kasten: "There was plenty of gloom and doom for months. But now it looks like a lot of people did a lot of things right." Boswell writes the "problems that emerged in April also came out of the blue." Snafus with the new scoreboard "were a surprise" to the team and time in concession lines "has been unsatisfactory." Also, "more than half of the 1,900 best -- and highest-priced -- seats sit embarrassingly empty for every game," which for TV viewers "create[s] the impression that the ballpark is almost vacant." One Nationals exec said of the vacant seats, "The Presidential and Diamond seats will get filled over time. Supply and demand will fix it. Maybe prices come down. Maybe we win and those are the hot seats" (WASHINGTON POST, 5/2).
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