The Royals and Rays played a doubleheader on Wednesday, but judging by the amount of people who attended you wouldn't have guessed games were being played at Kauffman Stadium.
Kansas City made up for Tuesday's postponed game by letting fans buy one ticket for access to the entire doubleheader. Now, it's one thing to love baseball, but two games in one day is a very long day at the ballpark. Couple that with the doubleheader between two small-market clubs coming in the middle of the week and you might have an attendance issue.
What resulted was a legitimately depressing sight.
I know that it's a Wednesday afternoon during the school year in a city that doesn't draw well against a team that doesn't attract a road crowd. But I've never seen so few people at a major league game as the one just starting now between Kansas City and Tampa Bay. pic.twitter.com/z3QUdfdWiT
— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) May 1, 2019
The Royals are ranked 28th in attendance and the Rays are just below them at 29th, so if Rays fans aren't showing up in Tampa Bay they definitely aren't going to be showing up in Kansas City.
By now we know about the attendance issues MLB is facing. There hasn't seen an increase in attendance since 2012, and last season it dipped below 70 million for the first time since 1997. A big part of this may be that it's easier to just watch from home. There are more streaming options than ever.
While every team isn't struggling with getting fans in the seats as badly as the Royals and Marlins, it's an ominous sign. We won't know the real number of fans who attended this game because teams measure it by ticket sales rather than actual seats filled, but that is an insanely empty ballpark by any metric.
