Major League Baseball concluded the 2013 regular season with a final attendance figure of 74,026,895, good for the sixth-highest total all-time, the league has announced. With this year’s numbers now final, it means that all of the 10 biggest attendance totals in MLB history have come in the last decade.
2013 MLB regular season attendance cracks 74 million
Attendance is actually down a smidgen from 2012, believe it or not.
Ezra Shaw
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It marks the second consecutive year that more than 74 million fans have turned out, though it’s the first season since 2009 that’s actually seen a decline in overall numbers. Over 800,000 more fans showed up for games last year, though much of that can be attributed to the steep declines in attendance this year in Miami (~600k) and Philadelphia (~550k).
After 2008’s record-shattering attendance -- 78,588,004 -- fans scaled back their on-site baseball consumption a bit and seem to have settled in at around 73-74 million.
All eight clubs to surpass the three-million mark this season did so for at least the second consecutive year. The Yankees (15 seasons), Cardinals (10) and Angels (10) boast the longest such streaks, but it's the Dodgers (2) who came out on top overall. The big-spending NL West champs drew over 3.7 million fans to Chavez Ravine this year, up 400k from 2012 and a massive improvement from the final days of Frank McCourt back in 2011.
And while the Marlins have gotten most of the bad press so far as drawing fans goes, it's actually their intra-state counterpart, the Tampa Bay Rays, who drew the fewest fans in 2013. The Rays attracted just 1.51 million to Tropicana Field this season, their lowest mark since 2007.
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