Attendance Versus Division Rivals - Boston Red Sox
Man, so it's been a while since I last got something up here. I apologize for that - my senior thesis was owning my butt for the last few weeks, but I just got it turned in today. That said, I've got a couple different projects I'm working on with attendance as the focus, and here's a sneak peak.
I hypothesize that there are three main variables that affect attendance: the competitiveness of the home team, the day of the week the game is played, and the quality of the opponent faced. There are other variables that can influence things as well, like if an ace pitcher is throwing or if there's a really popular promotion, but intuitively, those three feel much more significant than any other variable you might be able to come up with. Also, these three variables interact with and influence each other. For example, a really competitive team will draw more than a team that has historically stunk, but even competitve teams will most likely draw significantly worse during the week and against weak opponents.
In one of my early posts on attendance, I mentioned how I was going to chronicle how the Rays typically draw against various opponents. It's taken long enough, but I finally have a couple results to share. So here we go - we'll start off with a detailed look at how the Rays have historically draw when playing the Boston Red Sox.
Also, if you haven't read any of my earlier articles on attendance, feel free to direct yourself here, here, here, and here. For this current piece I'm going to be drawing on methodology from the second of those articles, where we looked at how the Rays have drawn on different days of the week. If you're interested by what I say here, feel free to take a look back at any of those articles for more information.
So far, I've only looked at how days of the week influence attendance. In that post on weekly attendance trends, I concluded that over the course of our franchise's history, we've drawn the most amount of fans on Saturdays and Sundays, and the least amount on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Big surprise, I know, but here's the average breakdown by percentage points above/below our average attendance per game.
| Mondays | -7.07% |
| Tuesdays | -7.42% |
| Wednesdays | -10.46% |
| Thursdays | -11.02% |
| Fridays | -1.46% |
| Saturdays | 27.73% |
| Sundays | 14.29% |
With that as a background, now on to the Red Sox. As one would assume, we've always drawn very well against the Sox, averaging 30% better attendance in games against them than our yearly average. Where things get interesting, though, is when we break it down by day of the week.
| Monday - Thursday | 13% |
| Friday - Sunday | 60% |
Again, this shouldn't be much of a surpise; it appears that we've historically drawn slightly above average again the Sox on days in the middle of the week and sold out the games on the weekends. For a good example of this trend, take a look at our attendance numbers during our home series against the Sox just last week:
| Thursday | 20,341 |
| Friday | 27,045 |
| Saturday | 34,910 |
| Sunday | 32,332 |
Notice the jump from Thursday night to Friday? That's an important thing to remember because taken in isolation, that 20K attendance on Thursday might seem concerning. Remember, though, Thursdays are normally our worst day of the week for attendance. The fans came out in droves over the weekend, which helped us average 28.6K for the entire series.
Another quick thing to note is that from 1998 to 2005, we played the Red Sox in a weekend series at home only once a year; some years, like 2001 and 2004, we didn't face them at home on the weekend at all. in the past couple years, though, the Rays started playing the Red Sox at home in two weekend series a year. Whether this was a conscious effort to try and attract more fans to the Trop or random schedule fluctuations, it helped bump our attendance up slightly those two years.
You're probably asking yourself, how do these numbers compare to other opponents? Do the Rays experience the largest bump in attendance versus the Sox or against the Yankees? How do the Marlins compare? Sadly, this is all I have for now, but hold onto all those questions because they'll be answered next.
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13 comments
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Comments
I would guess, given the Yankees subpar attendance last year
That recently we’ve dominated in Red Sox games. Although in the past I’m leaning more towards the Yankees. I’m not really sure how many seasons worth though.
by R.J. Anderson on May 10, 2009 11:27 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs
I know in the late 90's the Yankees were the big draw
Then the Sox won the World Series and their fans flocked to the trop.
by tallyray on May 10, 2009 11:29 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs
The four game set v CLE
will be interesting
THU and FRI are keys
by Raymondo on May 10, 2009 12:01 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs
/!\ DRAMA ALERT /!\
Looks like there is a slap fight going on between the two best Heater commenters, joemaddonsucks.com and tbird!
http://blogs.tampabay.com/rays/2009/05/for-starters-rays-red-sox.html#comments
Until Next Time,
The Sports Chief
by Top Gun Numba 1 on May 10, 2009 1:08 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs
Continue this discussion at TampaBay.com
.Upton has struggled for almost 3 years,
Um.
by R.J. Anderson on May 10, 2009 1:13 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
Steve
You should also note the locations of each ballpark—Fenway is in the middle of the city and exceeding easy to get to. If you’re leaving from work, you can just hop on the T and get to the park… easy. Not so with the Trop. This could affect your weekday comparison.
Also, people in Boston think of the Sox in a way that people in Tampa will probably never think of the Rays… for Bostonians, the Sox are history and tradition, and going to a game is often seen as a legitimate excuse for not being at work. This could also affect your weekday numbers.
There is also a HEALTHY scalping market here. Any seats not picked up by fans are bought by scalpers. Walk by Fenway, and you will see dozens. This is an everyday thing.
Finally, Red Sox tickets are used as favors here. What I mean is that most corporations buy a lot of the seats and use them to show clients the city, show them a good time, etc.
I think the facts above may play heavily into your numbers.
by plasticman on May 10, 2009 1:17 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs
What?
He’s comparing the Rays home attendance in games against Boston, not their home attendance in games versus us.
by R.J. Anderson on May 10, 2009 1:19 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
He seemed to suggest he was going to be doing more work on this. I'm just adding some food for thought.
by plasticman on May 10, 2009 1:23 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
I must've misunderstood your comment.
I thought you were under the impression he was comparing Boston’s home attendance to the Rays.
Disregard my comment above.
by R.J. Anderson on May 10, 2009 1:24 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
A few caveats
Firstly, Fenway is a good distance from Boston’s downtown area. Relatively speaking, the Trop is far closer to downtown St. Pete than Fenway Park is to Downtown Boston. In fact, Fenway Park would have been considered a suburban ballpark at the time of its opening in 1912. Times change.
While Fenway Park is easy to get to by mass transit, the Trop is similarly easy to get to by car. The stadium is located at the juncture of two interstate highways, a location that facilitates easy access to other parts of the metro area by I-275. If Tropicana Field’s location were linked up with a regional mass transit network, such as the one in planning right now, the usage of park and ride facilities spread throughout the metro area would make accessing the ballpark even easier, for everyone. At this point, there is no alternative location in the bay area better served by mass transit, everyone is in the same, equally crappy boat as far as that’s concerned.
The rest of what you say is largely a function of time. The type of enthusiasm you speak of with the Red Sox took years to cultivate, and it will take a similarly long amount of time for the Rays to become permanently embedded in the fabric of the area. In some ways, however, comparing Boston and Tampa Bay is like apples to oranges. Boston is simply a much older, much larger, and much more densely-populated area. There is no one, evident location that functions as a point of coalescence for the entire area, and I doubt there ever will be, on par with what Boston offers.
by Patrick L. Kennedy on May 10, 2009 6:07 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
You flew down as an angel from God to deliver us a message...
Rest in peace Patrick L. Kennedy
Swav or Die.
by SRQman on May 11, 2009 12:14 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
We gettin attendance like Na Na Na Na Na na
Until Next Time,
The Sports Chief
by Top Gun Numba 1 on May 10, 2009 1:25 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs
On this very topic, the most distracting part of the "blame it on the..." video is a toss up between Ron Howard and how bad Jamie Foxx's dance is.
Until Next Time,
The Sports Chief
by Top Gun Numba 1 on May 10, 2009 1:27 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

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