MLB’s attendance is up 9.3% this season through August 14 compared to the same period last season. MLB games this past weekend totaled more than 1.5 million fans in attendance for the ninth weekend this season — more than doubling the times that number was met in the past four full seasons.
In MLB’s last four full seasons (2018, 2019, 2021, 2022), the league combined for five weekends with more than 1.5 million ticketed fans. This past weekend’s 45-game MLB slate drew 1,545,659 fans for an average of 34,348 fans per game.
MLB’s attendance boost could be attributed to this season’s debut of a pitch clock, which has helped reduce the average nine-inning game time to two hours and 39 minutes, a nearly 30-minute decrease from last year’s three-hour and six-minute average game time.
The 9.3% attendance jump is even greater than MLB’s internal projections in June that forecasted a 6% to 8% attendance spike for the entire season. MLB has been reporting year-over-year attendance increases since April, the season’s first full month.
MLB’s top five teams by average home game attendance this season are the Los Angeles Dodgers, New York Yankees, St. Louis Cardinals, San Diego Padres, and the Atlanta Braves. The Oakland A’s rank last in attendance at roughly 10,500 fans per home game as the team plans to relocate to a new $1.5 billion stadium in Las Vegas, but that ballpark is not expected to be built until 2027.
