Cleveland Indians Experience Attendance, TV Ratings Increase in 2016
The Cleveland Indians saw an increase in the number of fans coming out to the ballpark in 2016, along with significant gains in people tuning into television broadcasts.
The Cleveland Indians on Sunday announced their final home attendance numbers for the 2016 regular season, and there was an increase in the number of folks through the turnstiles over 2015, if just a small one.
A total of 1,591,667 fans attended Progressive Field this season, an average of 19.650 per home game. That number is some 202,762 more than the 2015 figure of 1,388,905, just under a 15 percent increase.
Despite the gains, though, the Tribe placed third-lowest in all of Major League Baseball in attendance, ahead of only the Tampa Bay Rays and Oakland Athletics. Both Tampa and Oakland are infamous for having among the worst stadiums in baseball, so it’s not exactly the kind of company Cleveland wants to be keeping.
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While attendance remains an issue for the club, and a favorite target for derision by the media, it does not paint the full picture of how engaged the Indians’ fanbase is. Television viewership of broadcasts on SportsTime Ohio have enjoyed healthy increases this season, with a better than 60 percent jump in viewers over last year.
The Tribe is on pace for its best TV ratings in a decade, and the success of the team is an obvious factor.
“In September, as it became more evident that the Indians were going to play in their first Division Series in nine years, the average rating on STO is 7.55. As of Thursday, that was an 82% year-over-year jump for the month.”
The excitement over Cleveland’s first American League Central Division championship since 2007, which was clinched on Monday night in Detroit, is also fueling ticket sales for the 2016 postseason and beyond. Tickets for the ALDS sold out quickly on Monday morning, and, boosted by the inducement of priority access to this year’s playoffs, an additional 750 season ticket holders have been added to the team’s roughly 7,500 count from this season for 2017, as reported by Terry Pluto of the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
More than 700 of those new season ticket sales have come since August 1st, according to a Crain’s Cleveland Business interview with Tim Salcer, the Indians’ senior director of ticket sales and service.
“It has not stopped since the (14-game) winning streak in June,” Salcer said. “It has been extremely intense from then on.”
So, while there is certainly room for improvement for the club, it’s not exactly the pathetic, sky-is-falling scenario that is often depicted. The Indians have a passionate, engaged fanbase, it just so happens that many tune in from the comfort of their barcaloungers.
There may never be another era of Tribe baseball that sees a 455-game sellout streak or even attendance in the top half of MLB, but that doesn’t mean no one cares about the franchise. As long as there are games being played at the corner of Carnegie and Ontario, there will be full-throated, supportive fans of the Indians living and dying with every pitch.
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