Attendance at Dodgers games is way down this year, as Steve Dilbeck reports. And that's tickets sold. Actually human attendance is even worse. From Craig Calcaterra's take:
What’s Behind Dodgers’ Attendance Woes?
Dilbeck suspects, based on comments to his blog, that there’s a fan boycott afoot related to the McCourt fiasco. I’m somewhat skeptical simply because fan boycotts rarely if ever gain real traction, even if organized and endorsed by influential media voices (ask the talk radio people who tried to organize them with respect to the Mets and the Detroit Lions in recent years). Yes, I’m sure there are some people avoiding games in Los Angeles because of their McCourt distaste, but I bet the pall cast Bryan Stow beating, the unexciting hot stove season for the Dodgers and the middling-at-best prospects for the playoffs this year have more to do with it.
It doesn’t happen often, but I’m going to disagree slightly with Craig. While I think it’s true that we’re not seeing a boycott per se, people do vote with their feet and I think in this case they’re voting against the dark cloud that’s been hanging over the franchise for a while now, but particularly this spring.
Similarly, it's seemed to me for a while that fans won't show up even for a winning team if there's a perception that the franchise can't afford to keep winning. I've never seen a study that correlated payroll and attendance, but I do believe the Indians and Rays would draw better with higher payrolls, even while playing exactly as well as they're playing now.
So I would rank the reasons for the Dodgers’ attendance issues like this:
1. Frank McCourt
2. losing record in 2010
3. Bryan Stow
4. unexciting (i.e. Manny-free) winter
5. slow start in 2011
Maybe the Angels are siphoning off a few fans, too. Though the Angels have been big-spending winners for a while and are coming off a poor season, and yet the Dodgers led the National League in attendance just two seasons ago. There's obviously room for two immensely popular baseball teams in the Southland.
And in the long term, the Dodgers are still in great shape. They’re third in NL attendance right now, and have ranked first or second in the league for a long, long time. The people aren’t going away, and the fans won’t stay away for long. Prediction: Once McCourt’s gone, the stands will fill up quickly.
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