CNBC's fantastic sports business reporter Darren Rovell has a study of attendance figures across Major League Baseball. His reporting finds an overall decrease of 304 fans per game on average so far in 2011. That's a decline of less than one percent but still troubling since it continues a trend. Since 2007 baseball has seen attendance steadily decline down from a high of 30,138 to 28,997 so far this season.
There is good news, however, for the D-backs who have had some record-low numbers in the later part of last season and set a new low for a Sunday game this season. The gritty Snakes are up .1 percent to 23,710 per game so far this season. As Kirk Gibson has said, people will come watch the team if they are competitive and so far, he's right. Let's see if this trend continues through the summer.
The Diamondbacks rank 19th in average attendance so far this season.
Granted, it's a small sample size with just nine home games played over one home stand, but at least the numbers aren't going down like they are elsewhere in baseball. Attendance is down at Wrigley (-16%) for the Cubs and the Dodgers are down (-13.2%) as well.
SB Nation's Rob Neyer loves to talk about there being no demise of baseball coming, but certainly this four-year trend has to be troubling.