How Low Will Attendance Go?

[oakelmpine]

Getting to another thing someone posted. Is payroll really going to be in the $30 million range? As much as I wanted this stadium and dont care that public funds were used, I kinda wish now that Loria hadn't gotten the stadium and was forced to sell.

That's my guesstimate of where it will be on opening day, unless MLB or the players union or both make a stink about it. Loria wants this run as cheap as he can so he can maximize those revenue sharing monies.
--------------------
I say they draw 1.4 to 1.5 million, if the team is competitive and Stanton is hitting a lot of bombs. If he's hurt or traded and they are 20 games under "crickets sound"........

[Namaste]

Hugg doesn't go to games.

And I think the fact that Hugg doesn't go to games plays a big part in his Post-Firesale III attitude. I do not blame him at all for his recent stance on things. But I'm very confident that he would not feel the same if he lived nearby and attended a moderate amount of games.

[CrimsonCane]

My feelings are significantly heightened because I bought a season ticket package last season. One of the absolute worst investments I have ever made.

[Namaste]

Personally, I won't bail on attending Marlins games as a whole. I have two young children. I coach their baseball team. They love going to the new ballpark (although one of them started liking the Blue Jays even before all of this nonsense because they Blue Jays were doing that thing where their players were scoring runs and the Marlins were doing that thing where they score no runs).

But I think I'm going to bail on Opening Day this year (barring some HUGH moves being made moving forward). Fuck Jeff Loria and fuck David Samson and his spins on things.
My mini-protest is going to be bailing on Opening Day and not renewing my mini season ticket plan. Something I haven't done since 1998.

Someone hold me.

[Mainge]

Let me be the hitting coach, Daft.

[Namaste]

Let me be the hitting coach, Daft.

one time common, mainge

one is a righty and one is a lefty

we're gonna turn the righty into a switch hitter for sure

[Fish Tank Frenzy]

Attendance figures were always artificially inflated by this management team. The years they had "1.4-1.5" million in attendance was absolute bull shit. We all saw the crowds that were there and dont tell it was 'paid' attendance, 3/4ths of paid attendance didn't show up for every game. C'mon man.

[HUGG]

And I think the fact that Hugg doesn't go to games plays a big part in his Post-Firesale III attitude. I do not blame him at all for his recent stance on things. But I'm very confident that he would not feel the same if he lived nearby and attended a moderate amount of games.

Well to be fair my attitude only consists of:

1. I'm still gonna be a Marlins fan because I don't like anyone else and I got nothing better to do.

and

2. Some of the reactions are funny at this point and we can't even talk about baseball anymore because someone just comes in and says "who cares blah blah Loria blah blah." But, the board's also been the best it's ever been this week, so whatever.

It's not like I'm happy about the trade or think they did a good job or anything.

I'd still go to games if I lived there.

I'll probably go to Cincinnati to see them play this season. I like the Marlins. It's my cross to bear I guess.

[kylekash]

I'll sneek a flask of whiskey in that muthafucka and buy one large Coke.

but I seriously will sneek a flask in that mofo

We used to put beer bottles in our pockets and walk right in with no issues. It isn't that hard to bring stuff into the new park. One time one of the security people noticed the bottle in my friends pockets and still didn't care.

I am not renewing my season ticket plan. I'll try and scoop up tickets on the cheap just because I really like going to the new park. It sucks the team was broken up yet again, but there is no one else to root for. Hopefully the young players pan out and something similar to 2006 happens.

[Ramp]

what hugg said and stuff

[Beef]

Yeah, you're all Jeff Passan

[Swifty]

I don't think lou's that terribly off here.

If you take the Marlins at their word, they sold 25K FSEs (full season equivalents) this year. They drew 2.2 mil, so that's a 27 and change average. That means walk-up was tremendously low. I guess that's good for the franchise because you'd rather have a lot of early sales than walk-up, but it's entirely possible that this is the demand ceiling. Even in April and May, crowds weren't popping over 35K.

If you also take the Marlins at their word, renewal is BELOW 20%, which is truly terrible. Let's just say renewal hits at 20% even so that's, give or take, 5K FSE's. That means, going into next year, the team's guaranteed 405,000 people through the gates. Let's say the anger is real and some people are done with the team forever. Assuming that 27K is close to demand ceiling without a winning product, that's bad news. Even if you extrapolate an extra 10K in walk-up per game (which, let's be honest, is probably pretty close to best case) and that's 1.2 mil. Assume they start out reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally terribly and don't do anything remotely interesting until Yelich/Fernandez come up and put walkup at 8K/game and that's basically 1 mil exactly (1,053,000).

I don't think it's all that outlandish to peg 1 mil as the number.

PS: plus, the secondary market, which didn't exist in the early Loria years like it does now, could really be a factor here. Let's say those 5,000 people can't make it to a Wednesday against the Mets (for illustrative purposes because Wednesday against Pitt won't do dick) those potential walk-up pops could be mitigated (albeit relative) by the tickets for sale on stubhub, etc. Even if it just does 2K/game away from the box, that's still 162,000 tickets over a season. That's enough to go from 1.2 all's "well" to 1 million "oh shit".

[lou]

Yea, all that. And there is no way they sell 5,000 full year season tickets and they average 8k on walk ups.

It's going to be atrocious bad. And they deserve it.

[Swifty]

Yeah, the big thing to me is the last time this happened with Beckett, etc. they still had Cabrera and Hanley became really likable really fast. When they traded Miggy, most of the fans had run him out of town anyway for being fat (LOLz) and were fine with Hanley being "the man."

Now, you've got a significant amount of betrayal. You have some people who cashed out when Hanley was traded. You have some who decided not to make a financial commitment to a last place team. You have significantly more who did now. Renewal was in the pits BEFORE the trade. I'd imagine it's bottomed out now.

The recent comparisons re: attendance aren't fair because (1) trust is completely gone now and (2) stubhub wasn't really a significant player like it is today.

Even if the Marlins sneak out 1.2 mil, the last time a team drew fewer than 1.3 mil was 2006 (FLA) and the last time a team drew fewer than 1 mil was 2004 (MTL).

Either way, we're already talking historically bad first year in a new park and now, almost certainly, attendance numbers completely contrary to MLB's growth at the box office.

[MiamiHomer]

Protesters!