With the 2022 regular season behind us, Major League Baseball’s final attendance numbers are now being made public.
Starting from a league-wide standpoint, this past year marks the lowest attended regular season (64,556,636) since 1997 (63,168,689). This, obviously, is not taking into account the shortened 2020 campaign that forced stadiums to go empty or 2021, which featured variations of limited capacity. Even so, the underwhelming numbers continue the alarming downward trend that’s plagued the league for nearly a decade.
Again discounting the previous two years, Major League Baseball has seen its total attendance drop for nine straight seasons. With 2019 being the last true normal year, we can look at its total attendance of 68,494,752 and point out a -5.7% difference between now and then, marking the largest single-season drop since 2009 at -6.6% (72,267,544 in 2008 to 67,859,176 in ’09). The 2023 season could turn out to be crucial in determining whether the league was experiencing pandemic-related effects or if popularity is indeed taking a significant hit.
Larger numbers aside, not everything was so bad for the 2022 Chicago White Sox. In fact, they were one of nine teams to actually see an increase in their fan turnout, joining the likes of the Braves, Orioles, Tigers, Mets, Padres, Mariners, Marlins, and Blue Jays.
The Sox announced after their final home game that total paid attendance finished at 2,009,359, warranting a 22% increase since 2019 (1,649,775). Those numbers were also good enough to rank the team 19th overall in the league, jumping five spots from their previous 24th-place finish in ’19. As for pre-pandemic percentage increases, only the Padres (+25%), Mariners (+28%), and Blue Jays (+52%) saw better turnouts, all of whom clinched playoff berths. This is particularly impressive given the White Sox’ abysmal performance after the fan base was promised for years leading up to 2022.
For the White Sox front office, this offseason will prove to be a critical one if they hope to see the positive trends continue. Fans have not been shy about expressing their displeasure after the way things have been handled during a prime year in their contention window. GM Rick Hahn even acknowledged these strong feelings in Monday’s press conference and said, himself, that the team will need to earn its respect back from supporters.
A strong managerial hire and legitimate roster upgrades should likely go a long way in restoring faith. Otherwise, things could begin looking very differently a year from now.
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Featured Photo: White Sox/Twitter
I expect a significant decrease next year unless major changes are made to the roster.