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Counting attendance

Posted By Nick

Trying to compare attendance figures of games prior to 1993 to today can't be done. In 1993 MLB changed the way that they count attendance. Prior to 1993 actual attendance was counted as paid attendance. That is paying customers that actually went to the game. In 1993 attendance was counted based on tickets sold and not actual attendance at the game.

I lived in Colorado during that period and would go to games and watch them on TV and the attendance would be 45,000 plus even though a third of the seats were empty. The numbers are based on Coors Field. In the inaugeral game at Mile High Stadium the team put in bleachers to pad there numbers and claimed that the attendance was about 80,000 even though no one was sitting in those bleacher seats and some of the 76,000 remaining seats were empty. I went to a game in 1999 where the attendance was listed at about 44,000 in a 50,000 seat stadium even though most of the seats were empty.