Source
r/minnesotatwins•
timthyj

Twins Attendance Adjusted for City Population

Mods, feel free to delete this if it isn't allowed, but it is related to the Twins and I thought it was interesting. I was really bored this afternoon at the game since we were getting whooped, and looking at attendance numbers, and I realized that all of the sites that I could find always just showed average attendance at the stadium, without considering the size of the city/metro. I didn't think this is ok, because if you look at a city like St. Louis, it is much more impressive for them to have 38,000 people at a game (which is 10% of the entire city), than for LA to get 50,000 at a game (1% of the city).

I know that there is some weird districting so I ranked using city, county (except for Toronto, since Canada doesn't do counties), and metro, and averaged them together to try to adjust for districting differences, to see which teams bring out the most fans when you also consider the size of the city. I know it isn't perfect, but it's got to be better than just looking at average attendance.

TL;DR if you look at attendance per 100K people in the city/county/metro, the Twins are 10th, not 21st.

The maths: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bTKjFYQw2lsnQyuMowWjnGjlA77Jdevho0pQjewUqr0/edit?usp=sharing

Posted Jun 13, 2022, 3:53 AM UTC

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jhtheman99:bremer: Dick Bremer•

Good idea and nice chart. I agree that just going off raw attendance numbers is a bit unfair but I think this system is a bit unfair to the super big cities like LA, Chicago and NYC. Their parks still only hold like 40k-60k people, and it’s not like just because Yankee Stadium is in NYC means it’s accessible to all NYC citizens.

What if the comparisons also used % filled in some way? Dodger stadium seats like 56k so drawing 49k a game is actually pretty darn good.

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timthyjOP•

That’s a good idea! I’ll add that tomorrow

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Soggy_Educator_7364•

I’d be super interested to see this same data but using populations within 30 minutes average commute time of a stadium. Using just the 425k of Minneapolis seems a bit skewed as you allude to, but I think that the what, 2.5 million of the 3.6 that live within a 30 minute commute isn’t going to reflect well.

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timthyjOP•

Is that kind of information readily available? I’m down to make updates if I can get the information

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Soggy_Educator_7364•

you'd have to build it yourself :( i'm sure you could meaningfully estimate somehow though. taking metro areas would be another decent way to account.

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nowheresville99:cr: Cedar Rapids Kernels•

A couple minor issues with your data points.

Tampa Bay doesn't play in Tampa, they are in St. Pete and Pinellas County. That does affect their attendance, so it should probably be used.

For the Rangers, you used Dallas for the city, but you appear to have used Arlington's (Tarrant) county population.

But for the Braves, you used Atlanta's population for both, even though they actually play in Cobb county.

If you're still looking for a challenge, it would be interesting to also compare attendance to population of the claimed tv market (i.e. the MLB.tv blackout area.) For the Twins, that would be all of Minnesota and Iowa, most of the Dakotas, and parts of Wisconsin.

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nowheresville99:cr: Cedar Rapids Kernels•

Of course, also worth nothing that the Orioles and Nats have the identical TV market area. I believe that was part of the deal when the Expos moved to Washington.

You also have the idiotic overlap areas - like all of Iowa being claimed by 6 teams.

But since that's the area mlb wants to claim for each team, it's only fair that those are considered in ranking their fan base. I mean, I suspect there are very few Twins fans in Keokuk, Iowa, but since the Twins are considered their home market for TV it feels fair that they should count.

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idleline:tc: Minnesota Twins•

You can’t just account for the population of a city. You need to include surrounding areas within a reasonable driving distance if you’re trying to capture what the pool of potential attendees is. For St Louis this would be between 2-3 million depending on where you draw that boundary and not 300k

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mproud•

But there are even more variables to take into account, including:

  • Team performance
  • The teams the home team has been playing (AL East and NL West have more competitive opponents than the AL Central)
  • Ticket prices
  • Day vs. night games, weekdays vs. weekends
  • The weather
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handofluke:astudillo: Willians Astudillo•

Fascinating, great work!

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