WASHINGTON (AP) -Four seasons into baseball’s return to the nation’s capital, a resounding question hangs in the air: Where are the Washington Nationals’ fans?
The average attendance of 29,025 for the inaugural season at Nationals Park ranks among the bottom third of major league clubs – and is the worst in 26 years for an existing team at a first-year ballpark.
The local TV ratings, about 8,000 households per game according to Nielsen, are so low that Major League Baseball said Friday it is “surprised and disappointed.”
The explanation?
“We missed a whole generation here,” Nationals owner Mark Lerner said. “We have to build a fan base.”
Washington drew an average of 33,728 spectators at RFK Stadium in 2005, when the Montreal Expos moved south and brought the sport to D.C. after an absence of more than three decades.
Attendance dropped to 26,581 in Year 2, then 24,217 in Year 3, the team’s last at creaky, old RFK.
ost received by 17 other existing teams that moved into new stadiums over the past quarter-century. But not since the 1982 Minnesota Twins averaged a tad above 11,000 in the Metrodome has a club been greeted less warmly at its new address day after day.
Only eight games – No. 81 was rained out Thursday night in an appropriately dreary conclusion – drew more than the NL average of about 34,000 spectators. Many of the 41,888 seats were empty night after night.
That doesn’t seem to concern the sport’s hierarchy, the team’s front office or the Nationals players all that much, however.
Most point to the team’s poor play on the field – 99 losses heading into Friday’s game at the Philadelphia Phillies – as the main reason for the small crowds.
“We’ve almost lost 100 games, so that plays into that. I don’t know for sure, but my feeling – my gut – tells me that as we build into a winning team, all of that will start taking care of itself,” veteran infielder Aaron Boone said. “This is still new.”
Lerner, team president Stan Kasten and baseball’s chief operating officer, Bob DuPuy, all agree that more wins and fewer losses will boost ticket sales.
wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press.
He did add, however: “We have been surprised and disappointed at the reported local television ratings numbers and are attempting both to verify the accuracy of the numbers and to work with the club to ensure greater ratings next season.”
Said Kasten: “TV ratings? Radio ratings? Look, that’s a function of the kind of product we have. And again, that’s something that will be taken care of. If it’s a problem at all, it will vanish once we turn the corner as a team.”
Attendance has historically been a problem for major league clubs in Washington and played a key role when the city lost teams after the 1960 and 1971 seasons.
Kasten scoffed at the notion that Washington is not a baseball town.
“There’s also a history of the British taxing us. You’re talking about ancient history, you know? There’s just no relation between the ’30s and ’40s and ’50s and ’60s with where we are today – a powerful, mega-market, I think, that could easily sell out stadiums here and Baltimore for a whole season when the products merit it,” Kasten said. “Honest to goodness, I really do believe that. No question in my mind.”
Third baseman Ryan Zimmerman agrees.
Like other players, he understands why potential spectators might have stayed away – even if Nationals Park represented a significant upgrade from RFK Stadium.
ch a team that’s not doing too well,” Zimmerman said. “If we were 90-52, there would be a ton of baseball fans in D.C. When the Capitals were in last place, there weren’t any hockey fans here – and then they’re (selling) out the arena for the first game of the playoffs. It’s relative to what you’re doing on the field.”
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