The Miami Marlins are undergoing a lot of change at the moment, and not all of it is on the baseball field.
According to Clark Spencer of the Miami Herald, the Marlins plan to announce official crowd figures as actual tickets sold this season, rather than regular old attendance. That means any free tickets -- tickets given to charities, players' families, etc. -- are no longer included in the crowd size total.
As a result, this happened Friday night:
OK, the Marlins are serious about this actual paid attendance thing. Tonight: 12,034. Would have been announced as at least 20,000 last season.
— clarkspencer (@clarkspencer) March 31, 2018
Let me put this another way: In the past, I would have considered this a decent crowd. But tonight's figure is third-lowest since ballpark opened in 2012, and the two below it were games that were scheduled for Puerto Rico but moved back to Miami due to fears over the Zika virus. https://t.co/CYAHw5GYzN
— clarkspencer (@clarkspencer) March 31, 2018
Earlier this year it was reported the Marlins actually sold about 820,000 tickets last season, compared to their announced attendance of 1.6 million. Between their offseason fire sale and their new crowd size figures, the club figures to have much lower attendance numbers this year.
The Marlins, as part of "Project Wolverine," are reportedly expecting attendance to tick up a bit this season. Seems to me they'll have a tough time reaching that goal, but hey, stranger things have happened.
