Saturday, September 28, 2013

New York Team Attendance: 1903-2010

Written March 2011.  Click this link to view the entire document.  Here is a summary:


Attendance will be evaluated per game ...

Following  the 1957 season the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles and the Giants moved to San Francisco.

1962-2010 average combined attendance per game NY (Yankees and Mets) v. CA (Dodgers and Giants):

CA 57,952
NY 54,883

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YearsYankeesMetsGiantsDodgers
1903-201020,19715,78221,993
1903-195712,56910,1459,135
1947-195623,92113,94316,466
1958-196120,29519,09425,806
1962-201028,75126,13221,83936,113

The numbers speak for themselves.  The Giants fail to lead in any of these eras.  Dodgers win 3 of 5.  Yanks 2 of 5.  The so called glory years 1947-1956 have considerably less attendance for ten years than the 48 years 1962-2010.  This despite the fact that in 7 of those 10 years 1947-1956 both World Series teams were from New York and in the other three one New York team was in the World Series.  1947-1956 Giants were outdrawn:

Yankees  41.7% (23,921 - 13,943) / 23,921
Dodgers 15.3% (16,466 - 13,943) / 16,466

A case could be made that if the Giants had remained in New York and gotten Shea Stadium they would have had the Mets attendance,  4,293 and 16.4% higher than what they drew in San Francisco.  Some may say that NL would have not permitted the Dodgers to move to LA without another NL team on the west coast to make the relatively primitive  commercial air travel at the time more manageable but LA would have gotten a team around that time and New York was becoming a two team town.  Maybe the Chicago Cubs would have gone to San Francisco.  In 1956 and 1957 only the Giants prevented the Cubs from being last in NL attendance.  At least one New York team had to move and it wasn’t going to be the Yankees...

The Dodgers have been by far the most successful of any MLB team after moving.  Since leaving Brooklyn for Los Angeles, the Dodgers have had much better attendance than the Yankees, Giants or Mets as described above.
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