How is attendance calculated at sporting events, particularly Major League Baseball? Is it based on tickets sold, or butts in the seats?
And if it’s butts in the seats, do those figures include people in the stands who aren’t necessarily fans (reporters, photographers, etc.)?
Official MLB attendance figures are tickets sold.
At one time in the not too distant past the AL defined attendance as tickets sold and the NL defined attendance as butts in the seats.
In most box scores nowadays the unofficial “butts in the seats” number is typically listed in parentheses next to the official number now.
It also only counts those who paid to get in. Reporters and hot dog vendors don’t count.
All Major League Baseball attendance figures now are based on the number of tickets sold. There is no reference to the number of people who are actually at the game.
Other sports vary, but they will always look for the highest number they can, which is going to be tickets sold almost all the time.
Are these figures audited?
As in, what’s to prevent a team from selling a block of tickets at a nickel each, and counting that as paid attendance?
Many MLB teams will sell tickets at a nominal price and count them as paying customers. The Dodgers do this quite frequently.
I was going to mention the same thing. Depending on when the game is and who the opponent is, you can sometimes get tickets directly from the Dodgers for up to 70% off the ticket’s face value. It still counts as a ticket sold in terms of attendance numbers.
It does crack me up, however, when they announce in the eighth inning that the attendance was 47,000+ and I know from experience that there weren’t nearly that many people in the stadium.
Yeah, I noticed at Wrigley Field yesterday that the announced attendance was 40,000 ish, which is pretty close to Wrigley’s capacity. Never mind that there were quite a few empty seats.