There are plenty of reasons people don’t make it to the game. I don’t really understand why some posters here feel the need to get self-righteous about it.

Although I’m a student with an internship that pays peanuts and I still go to about half of the games. I don’t have quite the drive that you do, but I also know ways around the 275 mess.

As far as the prices, if you look hard enough, you can usually find ways to get upper deck/outfield seats for free…or at least very cheap. Out of the 30 or so games I’ve been to, I’ve probably paid full price for only 10 of them.

I also work in New Tampa. It has never taken me more than 50 minutes to get to the Trop. I would love to know what route you take in which it takes you 2 hours and 45 minutes to get from New Tampa to the will call window. There is rarely any traffic going into St. Pete. All the traffic is going in to Tampa.

Also I am not sure what tickets you are buying but Upper Deckers are $9 not $27

We have the cheapest ticket prices in the league. The stadium is easy to get to compared to most others in the league.

Honestly why are people rec’ing this post? It is overexagerrated BS

The Lightning play in downtown Tampa, easily accessible by a great number of people. It was a ritual in my office to walk to the Ice Palace to games during the playoff run, and then stumble back. It’s also easier to go from Brandon to downtown than from downtown to St. Pete.

Tickets are cheap here, absolutely. The time commitment to get out there and the number of games are the dagger in the heart, though. The Bolts rarely have a six-game homestand in six straight days.

Like I said, I’m lucky enough not to have the concerns most people living in this city do. I have a job that pays me well, I don’t have a wife and kids to be concerned with (although my girlfriend is becoming well-acquainted with the rays in the center field tank), and I work in a place where when I’m done with court for the day, I can leave early and the only person who looks at me weird is my secretary. The vast majority of the working class in Tampa don’t have that sort of luxury.

As far as my route, I travel down Dale Mabry, take the Courtney Campbell over to pick up the friend I go to games with at 60/19, and travel down 611 to Ulmerton to 275 to 375 to the Trop. We made the mistake of leaving the corner of 60/19 at 6 PM one day, and didn’t get to our seats until the third inning…and that was a game against the Blue Jays. Not exactly a big crowd.

The $27 figure comes from $9 upper deck seats, for a three game series.

I’m would be curious to take all the ticket purchases that have been made this year and group them by zip code to see where the folks going to most of the games live. Then I’d like to figure out where they work…which I’m not sure how to do. I think maybe you could look at some general daily migration surveys that I’ve seen for other cities that show population density from 8am – 5pm and then from 6pm – 6am essentially. You would have to make assumptions about where people are working but that would be interesting. I’d also like to see median incomes of those zip codes.

why other games outdrew – School already started in the TB area, whereas it doesn’t start until after Labor Day most of the rest of the country.

Seriously? I’m so sick of people complaining about the location of the stadium. I flipped to Ron and Ian after Bubba, and they were back on this topic. A caller called in to say that he lives in New Port Richey and that if the stadium was in downtown Tampa he would go to the games because it is faster. Well, I live in South Tampa and work in New Port Richey, and it takes exactly the same amount of time for me to get home as it does to get to A Rays game.

Nobody is going to change their stance on this. People in Hillsborough hate driving to Pinellas for entertainment…people in Pinellas want to keep their only pro sports team. No matter what facts are presented, people will still think the same.

Personally, I live in Pinellas county (Largo) so I would love to see the team stay here (with a new stadium). I think that we have shown the ability to sell out weeknight games against the better teams, so I think it CAN be done. I still think it’s a matter of season ticket base and believe it will get better next year and the years following.

As much as I love the team here, if we can’t support the team starting next year, I would not blame ownership a bit if they moved to Tampa…and I would still support them either way.

that goes to a regular amount of games (more than 10) and doesn’t fall into one of the categories in the post?

Does Tampa Metro Area have the best market? No. Worst market? No. Will attendance be a long-term issue once the team starts winning? No.

This is a young, exciting team with an owner that is very smart and in-tune with the public. We have already seen jumps in attendance, and we will see more and more as the team continues to be competitive.

One thing I’ve notice at Rays games. We have one of teh younger crowds of any team. I don’t know if it’s a product of the environment, price, or youth of the franchise, but to me this bodes well for the future of the team.

You’re going to the wrong way. You claimed that it used to take you two hours and forty five minutes to get to the Trop from downtown Tampa.

I understand where you are coming from. I can only make it out to Tues, Wed game and have gone to 14 games this year. But, i do not buy the fact that it’s a bad location. I can not buy that excuse.

The drive to get to Raymond James Stadium, especially before they fixed the “malfunction junction” was terrible if you were coming from a northeastern county. For Bucs games we have fans from all over the greater state coming to see the Bucs game. Yes, I understand it’s one day a week. Let’s take the Lightning, there stadium is in downtown St. Pete. The Lightning couldn’t give tickets away for free when they were terrible. Now, you can see a steady draw, if not a sell out on a nightly basis. Hell, the Tampa Bay area have successfully supported a Tampa Bay Storm franchise for almost 30 years! And you want to talk about about location. The Storm’s stadium was the trop (Thunderdome), and had record attendance, then the storm moved to St. Pete Times Forum (Icepalace) and still drew well. The bottom line, America, is winners will develop the culture of attending games into the fabric of our area. That’s it.

In the 60’s no one attending the Red Sox games. In the early 90’s they were thinking of moving the Green Bay Packers. In the 80’s Yankees games were not even close to sell-outs.

The reason we had 13,000 there last night isn’t because of the drive or the ticket prices. Almost every other MLB market has these same issues and they still draw. They have families who can’t make it on weeknights. They have people who can’t afford to make it to games regularly too. They have people who wish the stadium was closer to their home/work so they can attend more games. They have the same commuting problems a lot of times worse.

The variable is fan base and season ticket base. We have a short and not so sweet history. Some teams have been in cities for over 100 years. We have one of the smallest fan bases in the league. Most likely the smallest or 2nd smallest season ticket base. These are the reasons we don’t draw for a weeknight game against the Jays.

Quit making this about something it’s not.

South Lakeland to be exact. I go to between 12-15 games per year and can make it to the stadium and be in my seat for the first pitch if I leave by 5:15. Never had any problems. I always take I4 to I275 and even though it gets backed up I still make it. The only exception is when we have heavy rains I sometimes don’t make it on time, but I haven’t hit one of those this year.

I’ll simply post something about attendance.

They moved to St. Pete so they could go to more games.

…A) the low season ticket base, B) the (perceived at least) long travel times from Hillsborough, and C) the large percentage of families w/ kids who go to games but not so much on school nights.

Problem A will definitely improve as the winning continues. Problem B is here to stay unless the Rays do something build a stadium somewhere else or start a shuttle service or something. Problem C will also be around, but bodes well for summer & weekend crowds, not to mention the future.

Personally, I have 2 young kids and have never been to a game on a school night. It’s just too late.

Kazmir was on Jim Rome and said that the turn out was a “JOKE” on wed.

He also went on to say that everyone in the dugout was talking about it….that is not a good thing

That’s the simple truth. Give it a little time and you guys will be fine with attendance. Plus, summer just ended, so you should expect at least a slight dip in attendance on weekday games (at least until the playoffs start).

I like st. pete and the trop. The waterfront stadium was an awesome idea, i cant believe they wouldnt replace a baseball stadium with a baseball stadium. its not like we’re paving over some beautiful park.

But i think if you want draw more people, put the stadium in the middle of the cirle, not at the edge. the more people you encompass in your radius, the more will show up. right now half of our 50 mile draw radius encompasses the gulf of mexico.

What I have zero tolerance for is when those same people take it upon themselvsw to call into talk radio (or post on this board) and bitch about the lack of attendance

It’s not entirely relevant, I know, however, voting takes less time (both to do and drive to), plus it’s free, plus it’s available all day.

Also, I notice a lot of the complaints on attendance on the St. Pete Times this morning were from people who said they “saw the blue seats on TV”. Why weren’t they at the game?

For those of you interested, left the office at 4:46, in my seat at 7:03. Light traffic past the airport yesterday.

The stadium is located in the densest and richest part of the area. Some statistics:

County: Population/ Population Density/ Per capita Income/ Income per square mile

Pinellas: 928,031/ 3,292/ $23,497/ $77,352,124
Hillsborough: 1,177,060/ 951/ $21,812/ $20,743,212

Now the surrounding counties:

Pasco: 462,715/ 464/ $18,439/ $8,555,696
Polk: 561,606/ 259/ $18,439/ $4,775,701

Sarasota: 325,957/ 570/ $28,326/ $16,145,820
Manatee: 315,108/ 357/$22,388/ $7,992,516

 So, in essense if you move the stadium to the I4/fairground area, you lose the richer/more dense Sarasota and Manatee counties for the poorer more spread out counties. You also move further away from the densest richest part of the area (not just Pinellas county, also South Tampa). It just doesn’t make sense.