As the Cubs get ready to begin a 10-game homestand Thursday night against the Nationals, let's examine the attendance for the four games that were played last week.
Again, I will ask you: If this topic does not interest you, please pass it by. Further, I will state here that my in-house attendance estimates are just that: estimates, best guesses made based on my long years of experience in attending games at Wrigley Field. I do not purport them to be anything more than that.
Two of the six games scheduled for this homestand were rained out and the weather was cold and miserable for the four games that were played. As a result, both tickets-sold figures and in-house guesses were down:
Date Announced Crowd In-House Estimate 4/26 35,861 25,000 4/28 32,734 17,000 4/29 34,007 25,000 5/1 40,164 31,000
The cold, wet weather likely means that the 32,734 who paid for tickets for the April 28 game against the Brewers will be the smallest announced paid crowd of the year. The miserably cold weather held the in-house totals down for all of these games. Also, I had heard that the April 30 rainout vs. the Braves was expected to be a sellout. The Cubs will certainly sell more tickets for the April 27 rainout vs. the Brewers for the rescheduled date in August.
So what I've got here is: Total tickets sold for this homestand were 142,766, or 35,692 per date. My in-house estimates totalled 98,000, or 24,500 per date, so estimated no-shows were 44,766, or 11,192 per date. This number is quite high and isn't likely to be duplicated the rest of the season.
For the season the Cubs have sold 372,859 tickets, an average of 37,286 for the 10 home dates so far. My in-house estimates total 310,000, or 31,000 per date, so the estimated no-show count is 62,859, or 6,286 per date. The latter number is likely to start dropping as the weather improves.
Since the Cubs have played the fewest home dates (as of Thursday morning) of any team in the major leagues, the tickets-sold total ranks relatively low (15th). But the average per date ranks sixth, and only a couple hundred below the Yankees in fourth place, and I'd expect that ranking to go higher by the end of the upcoming homestand.
The Cubs need to sell 2,627,141 tickets over the 71 remaining home dates to have an official attendance of three million this year. That's 37,002 per date, certainly doable.
After the upcoming homestand ends May 15, I hope to have more ticket-pricing data from BCB reader Lifetime Cubs Fan.