Though attendance at Major League Baseball games picked up in June thanks to a lively showing during weekend interleague play, it wasn't enough to get MLB's gate back on pace as teams headed to the all-star break.
Average attendance was 27,078 through games on July 9, down 3.5 percent compared to the same point last year and down 9.3 percent compared to the same date in 2001.
Crowds were down 4.2 percent through the first quarter of the season.
Month-by-month comparisons show that baseball's attendance has declined with the slumping economy (see chart). MLB hasn't had a month that was better than the same month of the previous year since August 2001.
Average attendance for June was 29,352, down 2.1 percent compared to the previous June. July was off to a similarly flat start, with gate for the first week of the month averaging 29,091, which was off 4.3 percent from the same point last year.
There has been good news in a handful of cities. Seven clubs have seen boosts of 20 percent or more thus far this season: The Anaheim Angels (up 46.7 percent), Montreal Expos (40.7 percent), Cincinnati Reds (32.8), Florida Marlins (23.9), Philadelphia Phillies (23.3), Kansas City Royals (20.9) and Toronto Blue Jays (20.7).
The Expos and Marlins rank 30th and 28th, respectively, in attendance in spite of the gains. The Phillies, Blue Jays and Royals, who all have been buoyed by strong starts on the field, also remain in the bottom half of the attendance rankings, even with the improvement.
The Angels are by far MLB's brightest attendance story this season — no surprise considering the popularity they built on the way to last year's World Series championship. Averaging 36,273 per game through July 9, the Angels were on pace to draw 2.9 million fans this season, which would better the club record of 2,807,360 set in 1982, when they won the AL West but lost the ALCS.
The most troubling news continues to come out of the cities that fueled MLB's attendance gains through the 1990s. The seven clubs that have seen gate fall off by 20 percent or more when compared to the same point of the 2001 season all play in ballparks that were built since 1992.
The two-year declines for those clubs: Milwaukee Brewers (down 46.7 percent), Cleveland Indians (46.6 percent), Pittsburgh Pirates (31.1), Colorado Rockies (30.2), Texas Rangers (27.0), Detroit Tigers (24.4) and Baltimore Orioles (21.1). The Brewers, Indians, Rockies and Orioles also have seen double-digit declines this year vs. last year.
In a twist that few would have predicted during the ballpark-building boom, five of the top seven clubs in the attendance rankings play in parks built before 1967: the New York Yankees, Los Angeles Dodgers, St. Louis Cardinals, the Angels and the Chicago Cubs.
