Of the most popular sporting organizations in this country (NHL, MLB, NBA, NFL) which has seen the lowest single game attendance since 1975, not counting preseason? In other words, which hosted the game that holds the record for lowest attendance of those groups?
I don’t know for sure, but I’d bet it was at a cold spring day early in the season in Montreal for baseball
It wouldn’t surprise me if it was the Expos, but the weather might not have been much of a factor - they played in a dome. I think a late-season game, long after they’d been eliminated from contention, would have the lowest turnout.
Don’t know how this goes as a record, but 2 seasons ago, the New York Islanders (NHL) had attendance one night of about 800 or so during a blizzard that hit the area.
Two points that might make a hard GQ answer hard:
A. The NBA as we know it was formed after the date in the OP – in 1976 – so in theory there were two Professional Basketball Associations in 1975 and the ABA was dieing
B. Pro teams lie, lie, lie about attendance. Constantly and consistently: The NHL Caps will announce attendance of 12,000 when it is clear the 6,000 person mark has not been broken. Or as Charles Barkley famously put it when the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks announced 16,000 attending a game “If there were 16,000 here I will walk to Oakland.”
International football (soccer) games are sometimes played in empty stadiums as punishment for unruly fan behaviour. A quick Google of football empty stadium will bring up several exciting upcoming “events”.
Lowest attendance for a MLB game in the time specified was 746. The date was 4/9/1997 for a game between the Toronto Blue Jays and Chicago White Sox. The game had been cancelled due to bad weather and rescheduled on short notice for a midday start.
I wouldn’t say that the lie about attendance. They usually announce ‘paid attendance’. This is just the amount of seats sold. IMO it makes more sense to do it that way because that is how much money the team is getting for attendance. Therefore I think the OP needs to clarify his question. Unfortunetly I don’t think you will be able to actually find numbers on actual attendance oppsed to paid attendance.
Seems the question was answered factually already so I’ll add my quip:
Any sporting event taking place in the Oakland Coliseum. 
Dunno what it is about that place, but it always seems barren… doesn’t matter if it’s the Raiders playing or the A’s… or even the Golden State Warriors. The funny thing is that it’s so easily accessible (BART stop).
How many people were in the stands when Tony Gwynn got hit #3,000? Seventeen, eighteen? Never felt sorry for Montreal baseball again.
When was that?.. Was he still playing for the Padres? Sorry, I’m a Giants fan so I don’t know such things, even though I try to read the sports page every day.
Tony Gwynn’s 3000th hit came on August 6, 1999 in Montreal. The Padres won the game 12-10 before an announced crowd of 13,540.
Crowd of 13-5, ouch that sucks.
To match don’t ask’s comments about (real) football, and irritated by the OP’s reference to “this country”, I should point out that European football attendances are very much the actual number of people through the turnstiles.
A crowd of 13,540 was pretty good for Montreal in those days. They averaged just over 9500 fans per game that year.
Oh, forgot this: nominally professional (although some players achieve the giddy heights £10 per match), the Scottish Third Division has average attendances of a few hundred.
Some of the lowest levels of the baseball minor leagues, such as the Gulf Coast League, don’t even play in front of spectators. The teams just get together at a spring training facility and play around noon each day. If you know a game is going on, I suppose you could wander by and bring a lawn chair.
Point A is nonsense. Theory had nothing to do with it. The fact was that the NBA and ABA both existed in 1975 and played seasons that started in the fall of 1975 and carried over to the June of 1976 or thereabouts. That is no theory. More importantly, the fact that 4 of the ABA teams joined the NBA ifor the 1976-77 season while the other ABA teams went out of business (see hijack note below) doesn’t make the quesiton impossible to answer, it just widens the pool of team attendence game by game records that have to be searched.
Hijack Note: My favorite ABA team story is about the Spirits of St. Louis, who as part of the ABA/NBA settlement got the best deal in history, namely, a percentage of the NBA’s future TV revenue IN PERPETUITY. Talk about a cash cow.
I don’t know if this is a major league but perhaps a Major League Soccer game in Dallas.
There have to be probably about 20 people that actually show up for Dallas Burn games.
“Hi mom!!!”
Sorry to offend you with my use of the word “theory” – that was certainly taken in the context you put it a wrong usage. In a general GQ (non over emotional) sense though, the point is not “nonsense”.
The OP asks about “the most popular sporting organizations in this country” and includes the NBA, since 1975. The fact that the NBA as we know it did not exist, and the fact that a Professional basketball league that was dieing and, in 1975-77 was known to be shutting down by all of their fans is not “nonsense” in answering this question…
No where did I say the OP was impossible to answer – what I said was that a fact based GQ answer* was going to be hard to make - although I now see the Montreal-Jays game might be a low hard to beat.
(*OTOH it would be easy to make an over the top emotional answer, calling out your fellow dopers like you were in The Pit)
Queuing I understand you point: All I can say is that the teams I see somewhat regularly - Nationals, Caps, Wizards and Redskins almost never (I don’t want to say "never " to not overstate – I don’t remember it though) announce “Paid attendance at today’s game” they announce “Attendance at today’s game” - that I know they know, and we in attendance can sometimes tell, is absolutely false.