Compared to the previous season, overall attendance at MLB
regular season games was down by over 1.7 million fans with the largest declines
by Toronto (-575,137) and Seattle (-507,552).
Those two franchises represent over half of the total decline in MLB
regular season attendance alone. The
average decline in fan attendance was (-39,036) from the previous season. So, was this a (statistically) significant
decline in MLB attendance? To answer
that question, I will use a t-test, which is a statistical measure of the
relationship between two variables and then allows one to determine the degree
of confidence that the two variables have to each other. The t-test for regular season team attendance
from the 2018 to 2019 seasons results in 0.3944. The standard threshold for a t-test to be
statistically significant is 0.0500.
Thus since the t-test is above 0.0500, I conclude that while the change
in regular season team attendance declined from 2018 to 2019, it did not
decline in a statistically significant manner.
Tuesday, October 8, 2019
2019 MLB Attendance Analysis
Today I want to focus on MLB
fan behavior by looking at MLB team regular season attendance. To do this, I grabbed the data off of ESPN’s website. So let’s look at the 2019
regular season attendance data. First, a
total of 68,478,648 attended (or at least bought tickets) to regular season MLB
games this past season. The LA Dodgers
had the highest total attendance (3,974,309 fans) and the Miami Marlins had the
lowest total attendance (811,302 fans).
The average number of fans over the season was 2,282,622; with a
standard deviation of 762,879.