Wednesday, March 5, 2014
University of South Florida Baseball sets attendance record
We haven't even considered including college baseball on this site, but baseball is baseball. And fans who go to college baseball instead of a professional baseball game being played at the same time are definitely making a choice. And that affects the market.
While 6,696 baseball fans were at Clearwater's Bright House Field to see a spring training game between the Toronto Blue Jays and Philadelphia Phillies, 3,615 baseball fans were at the University of South Florida Baseball Stadium to watch USF take on the #2 ranked Florida State Seminoles. Fans filled the stands, lined the fences, and even sat on the steps of the rows as the game broke USF's previous attendance record by 404 fans.
So while Bright House Field was 79% capacity, USF's baseball stadium was at 112.6% capacity. With college baseball overlapping Spring Training and the first two months of the professional Major and Minor League seasons, maybe we need to track college baseball as well.