2015 Cubs Attendance Watch: August 31-September 6 Homestand

As I was traveling last week and the Cubs had a busy baseball week besides that, my wrap of the Cubs' attendance for the homestand at the beginning of September got pushed into the background. With a few days remaining before the Cubs return home Friday for the final homestand of 2015, here's how they did attendance-wise for the homestand that ended September 6.

Date     Announced Crowd     In-House Estimate
8/31        34,017              30,000
9/1         33,756              27,000
9/2         31,165              24,000
9/4         36,132              32,000
9/5         40,690              41,000
9/6         41,183              41,000

For the games against the Reds (the first three games of the homestand), schools being back in session and the Reds not attracting many of their fans due to Cincinnati's bad year depressed attendance figures, both in-house and announced.

Those numbers came right back up for the holiday weekend, as the Cubs had two full houses against the Diamondbacks. For the homestand the Cubs sold 216,943 tickets, or 36,157 per date. My in-house estimates for the homestand totaled 195,000, or 32,500 per date, so the estimated no-show count for the six dates was 21,943, or 3,657 per date. That's really a negligible no-show count that can be partly explained by iffy weather for a couple of the games.

For the season, the Cubs have now sold 2,566,057 tickets, or 36,142 per date. That total is just 86,056 short of the 2014 total, so the Cubs will pass last year's total by the end of the Cardinals series this upcoming weekend. My estimated in-house total for the season is now 2,236,000, or 31,493 per date, so the estimated no-shows for the season are 330,057, or 4,649 per date.

The Cubs have 10 dates remaining. You can figure that six of them -- the six against the Cardinals and Pirates -- will be sellouts or near-sellouts. The three against the Brewers, probably not so much, as they are weeknight games with schools in session against a team that's not likely to attract as many of its own fans as they usually do. The makeup game against the Royals had quite a number of tickets sold for the original May 30 date, so it might also be close to a sellout.

If the Cubs continue to average about 36,000 for the remaining 10 dates (that average, as shown above, was pretty much the same for the last homestand and now for the entire season) they will add 360,000 to the total and would be at approximately 2.93 million for the season. They'd have to sell 433,943 tickets to get to three million, which is obviously impossible given Wrigley Field's capacity. Given the fact that they lost about 100,000 bleacher-ticket sales before the bleachers were completely open, it seems that the Cubs have returned to near the ticket-sales level they had until about 2009.

As of Monday, September 14, Cubs total announced attendance ranks seventh in the major leagues, about 90,000 behind the Red Sox and about 60,000 ahead of the Royals (who set a franchise attendance record this year). The Cubs' average ranks sixth, about 1,200 per date behind the Angels and about 400 per date ahead of the Red Sox.