I find it hard to believe that the Dodgers have gone out and calculated other teams’ all-time attendance.
Season attendance is known and least for the last 100 years or so for all teams. I wouldn’t be surprised if it were known back to the beginning of the NL. So it’s just a matter of adding a bunch of numbers and you can guess you needn’t do it for most teams.
I’m guessing some teams who weren’t in that calculation include Real Madrid CF, CR Flamengo, FC Barcelona or Galatasaray SK etc.
How many games do those teams play in a year, though? Major League Baseball teams play 81 home games per season, and have since 1962. From 1920 to 1961, it was 77 home games. Based on longevity, the number of games, and the capacity of the ballparks, it’s hard to imagine any team from another sport that would beat the Dodgers.
It might be a little trickier than that. I’ve seen numbers cited for regular season attendance. If you want to calculate the all-time record, then you’d probably include post-season games, too.
Well these other clubs have similar longevity, have grounds of similar or greater capacity, have similar or greater average attendance. They certainly play less games. So the Dodgers stat, which is a lot of bums on a lot of seats at a lot of games for a lot of seasons might well be pre-eminent with daylight second.
But the “can’t imagine” leading to “so didn’t bother” resulting in “all the world, in all sports” perspective is not uncommonly expressed on these message boards. And it’s not always right.
I just checked and Premier League teams play 38 matches per year, so 19 home games. They’d have to draw four times as many fans per game (or be doing it for four times as long) to keep pace with a MLB team. I don’t know if the schedule has always been that many games or not.
NHL and NBA teams play about half as many games as MLB, but those indoor arenas are typically about 20,000 seats, so even if they sold out every game they’d still be behind most MLB teams.
Major League Baseball teams play six games a week over a six-month season. I don’t know any other big-league sport that permits such a busy schedule. And they’ve been doing it for a long time. Just back-of-the-envelope calculations make a pretty strong case that the all-time attendance record would have to be a MLB team.
That doesn’t include the cup and European games that Premier League teams play. Arsenal played 51 times last season, not including friendlies.
So if about 1/2 are home, then let’s say that a soccer team might play 30 per year at most. But remember that the Dodgers have also been a perennial playoff team through the decades, and those games are always sellouts. I can’t see how an Arsenal, Real, Juve or Bayern could come anywhere close.
A quick Google suggests that Manchester United (the best-supported football team in England) averaged around 73,500 fans each for their 19 home Premiership games last season. They also played 6 other competitive home games (3 Champions League, 1 FA Cup, 2 League Cup) and 4 home friendlies. Assuming that the ground was near-full for the competitive games and half-full for the friendlies, that comes out at just short of 2 million tickets for the season.
They’d have to keep that up for 117 years to match the Dodgers, which coincidentally is almost exactly the length of time since United won their first League title (1908).They moved to Old Trafford, with a designed capacity of 80,000, in 1910. I suspect the Dodgers probably still edge it, but it might be closer than you think.
Microsoft Copilot just told me that ‘there isn’t a readily available figure for the cumulative attendance over the club’s entire history.’
So it obviously cannot be determined, if AI can’t figure it out.
Another factor is that since 1958, the Dodgers have played in Los Angeles where the weather is relatively outstanding. It’s almost never freezing cold or oppressively hot.
But I have. I did a lot of work into ensuring I’m correct.
MLB reports attendance, and of course the Dodgers are way ahead. No other professional sports league has ever played enough games to approach them. Not even Man United (who of course didn’t always sell out, either.) Man United might actually be the best attended SOCCER team, but they come up short of the Dodgers.
https://european-football-statistics.co.uk/attnclub/league/manu.htm
The Dodgers win this battle not because LA fans are better than other fans but just because
- MLB is a very, very old league, and the Dodgers are a founding member,
- MLB plays a truly ridiculous number of games,
- The Dodgers moved to Los Angeles in 1958, which was essentially the perfect move to sell tickets, and
- The Dodgers have played an enormous number of playoff games - I didn’t add that attendance in because it’s harder to find, but they have more than a season’s worth of playoff games, essentially all of them sellouts. (The Yankees have even more but not enough to catch up in attendance.)
As to Microsoft Pilot, with due respect, don’t rely on online AIs for anything.
Anyway, let’s move on to other trivia tidbits.
Oh, believe me, it was just a lark.
Great post, BTW!
Just last week Jesus Sanchez of the Marlins became the answer to a trivia question:
Who is the only player to be called out on an intentional walk? With an open base the Cubs intentionally walked Sanchez. As he is going down to first he hears he is being replaced with a pinch runner. Sanchez returns to the dugout and the pinch runner goes to first. Sanchez never made it to the base. An appeal throw is made to first and after much consultation the umps call him out.
Who was the last MLB pitcher to start three games in a row?
Hint: It was in 2012 and was the first time it had been done in 95 years
Zack Greinke - He was ejected from a game in the 1st inning. He started the next day which was the last game before the All Star break. He then started the first game after the break.
I won’t say this is my favorite question, but might be a very difficult one.
The NFL record for interceptions returned for touchdowns in a game is 4. What two teams were involved, and who threw the fourth interception?
How many players have played all nine positions in a major-league baseball game, and who was the first to do so?
I assume not in the same game, correct?
Same game. 5 have done it. I knew its been done but I had to look up how many times.
Yep, same game, and 5 is correct. The first one to do it was in 1965.