Average home game attendance is down slightly more than 1,000 fans pe
Take us away from the ballgame
Let us jeer, jeer, jeer
For the home team
When they don't win and are to blame
It's a basic lesson of Consumer Behavior 101: When a product disappoints, sales drop.
That's as true for teams as for toothpaste. So it's hardly a shock that average Comerica Park patronage slumps to a 12-year low so far this year.
Average attendance is down about 1,000 per home game, compared to the first half of last season. (Flickr photo by Karen Breen-Bondie)
Bill Shea of Crain's Detroit Business analyzes the turnstile numbers from April 7-July 2 They confirm that many fans act rationally, not with blind loyalty.
Fan disappointment with the Tigers has manifested itself at the gate. Detroit is averaging 28,479 per game after 40 games at 41,299-seat Comerica Park. That ranks 16th among Major League Baseball's 30 clubs, and is slightly below the league-wide attendance average of 29,731 per game.
Detroit hasn't seen attendance numbers this low since averaging 25,306 a game — 21st in MLB -- in 2005.
A year ago, at the season's halfway point, the Tigers had averaged 29,488 per game over 39 games at Comerica, meaning Detroit is down slightly more than 1,000 fans per game year over year. . . .
The Tigers' only sellout so far this season was 45,013 for Opening Day, and they haven't come near that mark since. The next closest attendance figure is 36,442 on June 18, which was Father's Day.
Shea's blog post preceded Tuesday's 5-3 home victory against the San Francisco Giants, with an official crowd of 32,514 on a sunny holiday.
The sports business reporter adds historic context:
Detroit sold out two of 81 home games last season, and four in 2015. In 2014, the last year the Tigers made the playoffs, they sold out 27 of 81 home games.
Tigers attendance peaked in 2008 . . . [with] a club-record 41 sellouts. They averaged 39,538 that season.
Unsold seats are "not pretty," Shea writes, "but it's too soon to tell if there are any dollars-and-cents implications."
The Tigers are owned by the billionaire Ilitch family, so there's no apparent financial emergency with the loss of millions of dollars in ticket and concession revenue. The team doesn't open its books, so it's impossible to know their true financial state.
He also goes to the archives to present data for the on-field product:
Halfway through the season, the Tigers sit at 36-45 [now 37-45], their worst record after 81 games since the catastrophic 2003 season that saw them finish 43-119. The current Tigers aren't that bad, but they're not good.
At their current .444 winning percentage, they're on pace to finish 71-91, their poorest showing since recording that same win-loss total in 2005
