Small crowds for the Braves’ nationally televised home games Sunday and Monday against first-place opponents’ brought into focus an overall decline in attendance this season at Turner Field.
The Braves sold just 18,191 tickets for Sunday night’s game against the Nationals, their National League East rivals, and 20,053 for Monday’s series opener against the NL West-leading Dodgers, who had plenty of their own fans making up a good portion of that total.
Average home attendance is down by more than 2,000 from last season, and the Braves ranked 17th in the majors with an average of 29,160 before Tuesday.
“These things go in cycles,” Braves CEO Terry McGuirk said. “I’d certainly love to see the attendance a little higher. The team’s been a little spotty lately, and sometimes that’s the result, fewer people attending. But the old adage, I think always sticks: You’re never as bad as the losing streaks and never as good as the winning streaks. I think we’ll be fine.”
It’s the Braves’ first season as a sort of Inside-The-Perimeter lame duck, since announcing in November a planned move to Cobb County in 2017. Braves officials don’t believe the attendance decline isn’t the result of backlash from some fans over the pending move.
The second-place Braves had a 43-51 record since a promising 17-7 start to the season, and their offense has been disappointing and rather boring for most of the season.
“I don’t think the attendance this year has anything to with any future years,” said McGuirk, dismissing the notion of the pending move affecting current crowds. “Remember, school starts awful early here and that has a big effect on attendance. And we always know that, especially when you have Sunday games that get moved from afternoon to night. Those are difficult things for fans to schedule for; even we get very little notice on those things.
“I don’t really have any concerns. We’re going to have to do a little better on the field and we’ll deserve to ask for a little more attendance.”
The Braves’ currently rank 17th in the majors in average home attendance (29,160), which would be their lowest average since 1991 (26,422). Total home attendance jumped from 2.14 million to 3.077 million in 1992, the year after the Braves’ worst-to-first season, and they drew more than 3 million six times in a span of seven non strike-shortened seasons through 2000.
Those who weren’t around then and have only taken note of Braves attendance in the past decade might have trouble imagining how huge the crowds were during the 1990s, peaking in 1993 when the Braves drew more than 3.88 million at old Atlanta Fulton Country Stadium and ranked third in the majors with an average of 47,960.
Current attendance is down 27 percent from the 2000 season, when the Braves averaged nearly 39,930 and ranked sixth in the majors, ahead of such teams as the Yankees, Dodgers, Red Sox and Tigers. The Braves drew 3,234,304 that season, and the attendance declined sharply the next season and has never returned to the levels the Braves enjoyed in the 1990s.
That 2000 season was the last time they drew 3 million, and the last time the Braves ranked in the top third in attendance was 2001, when they were 10th with an average of 34,858. The Braves ranked between 13th and 16th every season from 2004 through 2013.
