Take a bow, Theo Epstein! As of this morning, Major League ballparks are attracting an average of 28,583 fans per game. That’s over 2,500 more fans coming through the turnstiles each game than last year. But more importantly, this number shows that, across baseball, attendance has finally recovered to pre-pandemic levels (in 2019, MLB ballparks averaged 28,204 fans per game).
In fact, of the 30 MLB teams, 25 of them have seen increased attendance this year, with the Phillies in particular seeing a massive jump of over 11,000 additional fans per game. If you understand how the patterns of in-game attendance usually work, it isn’t surprising that the Phillies have seen such an increase; that’s because a team’s attendance in any given year is usually (though by no means always) a reflection of (a) how the team performed in the previous year, and (b) how splashy their offseason was.