Major League Baseball’s Cardinals, traditionally one of the league’s most successful franchises on and off the field, know they’re in a tough spot and are vowing immediate corrections.
While introducing the new president of baseball operations, Chaim Bloom, Cardinals owner Bill DeWitt Jr. acknowledged the alarming attendance retreat at Busch Stadium and said “message received.” The team this year saw its attendance drop by 628,108, by far MLB’s largest decrease, greater than those seen by the Rays and A’s after moving into minor league stadiums, and counter to leaguewide growth.
The Cardinals’ 2025 attendance, which also included a record low for a single game at Busch Stadium, followed one of 362,976 last year that also led the league. The figures sharply reverse a trend in which the team was a top-five draw in MLB every year from 2013 to 2019 and in the top 10 in many other pre-pandemic seasons. Fueling the latest declines at the gates is a three-year run out of the postseason for St. Louis, a marked turnaround from when the team made the playoffs nine times between 2011 and 2022.
“I understand [the fans’] frustration,” DeWitt said. “They love their Cardinals. They love their Cardinals winning. We’re going to make every effort to get back to that.”
A key part of that effort is the promotion of Bloom, formerly in the same role with the Red Sox, and working with the Cardinals the last two years as an advisor. Bloom will succeed John Mozeliak, who is voluntarily departing after a 30-year run with the Cardinals that included two World Series titles.
The Cardinals compete in a particularly tough National League Central division that includes the Brewers (the best team in baseball this year), the playoff-bound Cubs and Reds, and a Pirates team that, while still a losing one, has arguably the game’s best pitcher in Paul Skenes.
There’s also a growing economic divide across MLB, one that will factor directly into labor negotiations next year between the league and the MLB Players Association. In the meantime, DeWitt and Bloom said they have not yet set a 2026 payroll for the Cardinals. The club’s 2025 luxury-tax payroll of $156.6 million ranked 19th in the league.
“We don’t know what our payroll is going to be,” DeWitt said about 2026. “I can’t tell you right now, but we’re going to provide the resources for [Bloom] to build what he’s talking about building, and we can take it from there.”
