Capstone // Matchups

The third page has attendance information for specific matchups. We are once again looking at data for 2010-2024, with the 2020 and 2021 seasons excluded due to their attendance restrictions. Here, we can focus on our first in-field factor: the away team¹.

The dashboard on the left gives us four pieces of information:

• Average attendance for the home team, as measured in percentage of capacity
• Average attendance for the specified matchup, as measured in percentage of capacity²
• Total number of attendees for the specified matchup
• Games played for the specified matchup

There are a few interesting observations to be found when looking at attendance this way. Let’s start with rivalries– for example, that between the (then) Oakland Athletics and their rivals across the bay, the San Francisco Giants. While the Athletics, on average, drew a crowd of 46.48% of the typical capacity of the Oakland Coliseum, hosting the Giants more than doubled the capacity, nearly selling out at an average 95.26% of capacity. When the matchup is reversed (i.e., when the Giants host the A’s), we see a similar, albeit less drastic, bump in attendance. The Giants already boast a 91.14% average attendance, but when the A’s play at Oracle Park attendance spikes to an average of 95.95%.

Another factor to look at is simply, well, who the home team is playing. Having the New York Yankees in town brings in above-average crowds to every venue with the exception of Oracle Park, home of the San Francisco Giants³. On the other hand, a team like the Baltimore Orioles only attracts above-average crowds at 10 of the 29 venues they visit, and even then average attendance at only one of those 10 venues is more than 10 percentage points higher than average⁴.

There is a clear difference in attendance depending on who the away team is, but this illuminates where the key to our initial question of “Which factors affect attendace?” might be found: on the field.

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1. Interleague play– that is, games between teams of the American and National Leagues, is a relatively new phenomenon. They were not regularly scheduled until the 2002 season, and even then they were limited to geographically close teams. In the 2023 season, MLB started having every team play against each other at least once. This explains why you might see some teams not play each other at all some seasons. ↩︎
2. “Specified matchup” refers to the specific home-away teams combination, rather than an aggregate total of the two specified teams’ games. ↩︎
3. This matchup still brings an above-league average 85.09% capacity, but as stated when talking about the Giants-A’s matchup, the Giants sit at a very comfortable 91.14% average attendance. ↩︎
4. The Baltimore Orioles at the Washington Nationals’ matchup has an average attendance of 79.77% capacity, compared to the Nationals’ average attendance of 68.58%. ↩︎