You know, it’s funny. Due to a number of factors, I didn’t get to nearly the number of Shorebirds games I had the previous few seasons but I think I have a better understanding of how things are because, one, I could step back a bit and see things from without, and, two, I had some long and interesting talks with Shorebirds management regarding suggestions I’d made in previous years.
And in all honesty, the problem may run deeper than a few cosmetic changes. Let’s look at some numbers for comparison’s sake – I actually found numbers for the entire 16-year history of the club but for simplicity I’ll just put up years 1, 6, 11, and 16.
- Year 1 (1996): 315,011 – 4,846 per game
- Year 6 (2001): 268,143 – 3,886 per game
- Year 11 (2006): 217,980 – 3,406 per game
- Year 16 (2011): 211,993 – 3,072 per game
In both actual attendance and average (not to mention on-field performance) this year was the worst in Shorebirds history. Having said that, though, the Shorebirds still ranked sixth in the league in average attendance and once again was tops among the three 7th Inning Stretch (the LLC which owns the Shorebirds and two other minor league clubs) teams in both average and actual attendance. This is the fifth season the Shorebirds have been owned by the group but the eighth straight year attendance has settled into a narrow range between this year’s low and the 2008 peak of 226,754. That edition happens to be the last team which was good on the field, as they compiled a 78-61 record that summer.
With that in mind, I think I can make an assumption that having a good team would improve attendance perhaps 10 percent. It’s probably not in the cards that we’ll see another attendance record like 1997’s 324,412 (the all-time record here) unless the overall economy improves and the area begins to grow again. True, we won the SAL title in 1997 but we did so again three seasons later and attendance wasn’t markedly better than the previous two campaigns.
Continue reading “Picks and pans from a Shorebird fan – 2011 edition”