We found that attendance trends for Minor League Baseball and Major League Baseball in Tampa Bay are very different. While the amount of fans is definitely different, it is interesting to see when fans go to Minor League Baseball and when fans go to Rays games. Granted, these might not even be the same fans, but tracking the behavior of each fanbase is interesting.
Among the conclusions of the last post:
- May is bad for the Rays, but very good for Minor League baseball.
- June is a bad month for both the Rays and Minor League Baseball.
- July is the best month for baseball attendance overall in the Tampa Bay area.
- The beginning and end of the season draw similarly.
But one of the biggest admitted problems with the last post was that I grouped all the Minor League teams together. We can almost safely assume fans of each team don't often go to many games of the other Minor League teams. The only usual exception might be fans of the Dunedin Blue Jays going to Clearwater and vice versa, due to those teams' proximity to each other.
So are all the Minor League teams the same? Do they all follow the same average monthly trends?
Here are the monthly trends for each team in the Tampa Bay area since 2007, starting with the Rays.
Since 2007, Rays attendance has followed this pattern from highest to lowest:
- July
- April
- August
- September/October
- June
- May
Here are the monthly attendance trends for the Clearwater Threshers:
Since 2007, Threshers attendance has followed this pattern from highest to lowest:
- May / July (tie)
- April
- August/Sept
- June
Here are the monthly attendance trends for the Tampa Yankees:
Since 2007, Tampa Yankees attendance has followed this pattern from highest to lowest:
- May
- July
- April
- June
- August/Sept
Here are the monthly attendance trends for the Dunedin Blue Jays:
Since 2007, Dunedin Blue Jays attendance has followed this pattern from highest to lowest:
- April
- July
- August/Sept
- May / June (tie)
Here are the monthly attendance trends for the Bradenton Marauders:
Since 2010, Bradenton Marauders attendance has followed this pattern from highest to lowest:
- July
- August/Sept
- June
- May
- April
The following chart depicts each team and their average monthly attendance pattern:
This chart shows us that the Minor League teams all have different monthly attendance trends. While the Clearwater Threshers and Tampa Yankees are similar, the Dunedin Blue Jays and Bradenton Marauders are unique. And no Minor League team's attendance trend is similar to the Rays.
This graph depicts the previous chart:
One consistent we see through each team is July. July is either the first, tied for first, or the second highest drawing month for every baseball team playing in the Tampa Bay area.
There is also something else interesting: the two highest drawing teams - the Threshers and Yankees - have their highest attendance in May. So they are driving the trend we saw in the last post when we concluded May was a good month for Minor League teams while a bad month for the Rays. This is curious, although we might never find out if any fans are opting to see the Yankees and Threshers in May instead of visiting Tropicana Field.
However, weather might play a role in this attendance phenomenon. In May in the Tampa Bay area, the high temperature is usually in the mid-80s and the lows are in the mid-60s. When baseball games start in the early evening, the temperature is usually in the 70s. According to weatherspark.com, temperature is in the "comfortable to warm" bracket. According to usclimatedata.com, May is one of the least rainiest months in Tampa Bay. So the combination of nice weather and little chance of rain may be the reason more fans see the Threshers and Yankees in May than any other month.
Which might be a good reason for the Rays to look at a retractable dome if/when they build a new stadium, wherever it may be.
But as for the present, there is still a lot to study. I will be breaking each team's attendace down even more in the coming weeks, devoting entire posts to the monthly averages of each Minor League team in Tampa Bay. Then we will dive into per day averages.
I'm not sure what we will come up with, but it should give us more insight into the patterns, trends, and anomalies of baseball ticket buying behavior in the Tampa Bay area.