It took until the final day of the regular season, but Major League Baseball scratched out another attendance increase to solidify its first three-year run of growth at the gates since 2005–2007.
Including the 15 games played simultaneously Sunday afternoon, the league finished the 2025 regular season with a total attendance of 71.4 million, up a scant .09% from last year.
The league went into the season with plenty of confidence that its attendance momentum from 2023, jump-started by that year’s introduction of several meaningful on-field rule changes, including the pitch clock, would continue for a third season. That confidence was ultimately validated.
There was some final drama around surpassing the 2024 attendance number; however, as the overall league figure was dragged somewhat by both the Rays and A’s played this season in minor-league ballparks, and the widening gap between high-drawing clubs and other low-drawing ones.
The Dodgers, as expected, led MLB in attendance for the 12th straight year, drawing a franchise record of 4.01 million, representing the first team in the league to reach that figure since 2008. The A’s were at the bottom with a total of 768,464, holding the same position they had last year in Oakland, while choosing to play the first three planned years in Sacramento at Sutter Health Park, while a new ballpark in Las Vegas is built. The team surpassed 10,000 in home attendance for a game just twice after the All-Star break—both in this past weekend’s closing series against the Royals.
The Rays were 29th in attendance, totaling 786,750 while playing in a minor-league ballpark by circumstance instead of choice, as repairs to hurricane-damaged Tropicana Field continue in anticipation of next year. The team played home games this season at George M. Steinbrenner Field in Tampa, also the spring training home of the Yankees.
Speaking earlier this month at the Front Office Sports Tuned In summit, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred lauded the league’s ongoing attendance growth.
“It’s a continuation of the momentum that we’ve seen in the game,” Manfred said at the summit. “We are playing in two minor-league ballparks, which is a little bit of a drag on your attendance, but despite that, we’re going to be above 70 million [in total attendance] again, which I see as a real accomplishment for the sport. That momentum is really important going into 2026.”
Notably, the 60,666 spread between last year’s full-season attendance and this year’s figure is similar to the difference in capacities between Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati and Bristol Motor Speedway in Tennessee, site of this year’s MLB Speedway Classic. That special-event game, though delayed by rain, drew an announced attendance of 91,032, representing the largest single-game crowd in league history.
