2012 Cubs Attendance Watch

As is my custom this season, at the end of every homestand I'm going to post the actual Cubs attendance and my estimates of how many people were actually in the house.

Good weather for the just-completed homestand against the Phillies and White Sox brought out big crowds and very few no-shows:

Date     Announced Crowd     In-House Estimate
5/16      38,678              31,000
5/17      37,986              28,000
5/18      34,937              32,000
5/19      40,228              40,000
5/20      38,374              38,000

You'll note one anomalous figure there: the 34,937 announced tickets sold on Friday, May 18 was the smallest crowd in the 87-game history of the Cubs/White Sox regular-season series, dating back to 1997. High ticket prices, I'd say, have the most to do with that, although the Saturday and Sunday games, with the same price, managed to come closer to sellouts.

For the season the Cubs have now announced 894,845 tickets sold, an average of 37,285 per game, which bubbles just above the 37,037 per date they'd need for the "magical" three million announced attendance again this year. These numbers rank fifth in the National League and, as was the case the last time I posted on this topic two weeks ago, the average is up over the same number of dates a year ago, by 2,159 per date.

I'd attribute that to better weather and better opponents this season, and also, lower ticket prices for some of the early-season dates.

As you can see above, my in-house estimates were pretty close for several of the dates and also, there were far fewer no-shows for this homestand. For the homestand, total announced attendance was 190,203, or 38,041 per date. My estimates totaled 169,000, or 33,800 per date, so fewer than 4,000 no-shows per date, on average.

For the season, my estimates total 652,000, or 27,167 per date. That average is up about 1,500 from the last post, but there have still been, by my guess, about 10,000 no-shows on average for the 24 home dates so far. That number will continue to drop through June... but then might go up again in August, because there are 23 home games after August 24, when most kids are back in school.

And by then, this team could be buried in sixth place.