Why none of us should worry about Royals home game attendance

We’re fine

On August 26, 2014, the Kansas City Royals roared back in the bottom of the ninth to walk off the Minnesota Twins. It was an extraordinarily quick half inning: shortstop Alcides Escobar singled and then left fielder Alex Gordon crushed a home run to give them the two runs they needed to win.

At that point in the season, Kansas City led the division and were on track for their first playoff appearance in 29 years (something that would indeed happen). But manager Ned Yost was not pleased with the attendance, as under 14,000 fans were at the game:

“I mean, what, 13,000 people got to see a great game?” he said in his post-game news conference.

...“There’s a real need for our fans to be a part of this. We had a great crowd last night, and I was kind of hoping we’d have another great crowd tonight, and we really didn’t. “They’re a big part of our success, especially at home. Because the electricity they provide, the energy they provide, helps you get through games like this. You know? We’ve been working hard to make our fans happy and make our fans proud for a lot of years, and we’d like them out here to enjoy a night like this with us. Because this was a special night. This was a fun night. I just wish there could’ve been more out here to enjoy it with us.”

Yost was eviscerated by the fans and the media, for good reason, and when playoff time came around watching a game at Kauffman Stadium was like a religious experience. Every home playoff game sold out, and for those of us lucky enough to attend the Wild Card Game, well, you know. The very next season, the Royals—the small market Royals with one of the lowest metro populations in the league—pulled in 33,438 fans and cracked the top 10 in total attendance among all MLB teams.

So why bring up a part of Yost’s history that is a tiny and irrelevant footnote? Because 10 years later, it’s starting to feel like deja vu: while Royals manager Matt Quatraro has wisely kept his mouth shut, some fans are frustrated as Yost was about Kansas City’s attendance, or lack thereof, of home games down the stretch. Probably the most prominent example is this tweet by Braiden Turner, his complaint about attendance coming on on August 19—one week from the 10th anniversary of Yost’s attendance tirade—a tweet which has, as I write this, over 500 likes and has been seen over 350,000 times.

Are the Royals worth watching? Absolutely. Bobby Witt Jr. is a superstar on a Hall of Fame track, which sounds silly except for the fact that only eventual Hall of Famers put up numbers like Witt is doing this year. Kansas City has probably the best starting rotation in baseball, the team has an 80% chance to make the playoffs, and is captained by Royals legend Salvador Perez.

And here’s the thing: Royals fans are watching, and they’re watching a lot. In a moment of brilliant timing, Bally Sports Kansas City emailed me a press release about viewership. The app has generated a nearly 200% increase in unique streamers, while the average game on linear TV is averaging a 3.3 rating—a 22% year over year increase. And meanwhile, that Monday game that Turner was complaining about? It peaked at a 6.5 rating, the most-viewed broadcast of the year.

Furthermore, more fans are indeed going to the game. In 2023, the Royals average per-game home attendance was 16,136. This year, they’ve pulled an average of 20,264. That is a one-year attendance bump of 25%, which is a huge improvement. For additional context, that’s the most per-game attendance we’ve seen since the 2017 season, which drew an average of 27,754 fans.

But why aren’t more fans coming to the games this year? I’ve seen speculation that it has to do with the stadium’s location or that voters are still salty about the organization’s play for a new ballpark earlier this year or that the city is spread too thin among multiple sports franchises. None of these are remotely correct.

In fact, the real reason why there aren’t that many fans compare to 2015-2017 is simple and rather dull: season ticket sales.

As any box office manager (or former box office lead, in my case) will tell you, season tickets are the lifeblood of any organization that sells tickets. Unless you run a very small venue, you’re going to have thousands or tens of thousands of tickets to sell in the course of a show run or series run. And the Royals do not run a small venue. They have 3 million seats to fill every year. The only way to do so is via season ticket sales, which sells 81 or 40 or even 20 games at a time.

The problem with season ticket sales is that they lag one year. The Royals, like every MLB team, sells season tickets for the following season at the end of the current one. So think about what it was like at the end of September 2023: the Royals had just lost 106 games. If you’re a casual fan, you are not buying season tickets after that. But if these Royals make the playoffs for the first time in almost a decade? Those sales will come.

For now, enjoy the ride. Those who get to see playoff-caliber baseball will get a unique experience. I’m not worried. We’ll see attendance rise next year for sure.