What will it take to get people to Astros games again? Is the best hope for 2018 if the team can make it to the ALCS or World Series this year? They are currently 15th in the MLB in attendance with 28k a game. Oddly, they are 23rd in the league in road attendance. You would think it would be higher because they are doing so well. The home attendance for other AL West teams weights that more but the average for the other 4 AL West teams would put them at 17th in the league. The AL east has the best average home attendance and the AL Central cumulative average is really bad. The point being that being in the AL West doesn't distort their road average like being in the AL East or AL Central.
I'm sure attendance will improve now that summer is here. But, cheap tickets and cheap food would surely bring in more people.
I was listening to Effectively Wild the other day and they put it something like this...The Astros beat you with a deep lineup. Having more average players isn't exciting to write about. I would guess from All-Star ballots that fans probably think this as well. In addition, while Astros have Yankees and Angels on weekends, they also had the A's and the Rays.
Tickets are still relatively cheap depending on where you buy. Been to I think 5 games this season, outside of the opening series, I've bought the $7-11 tickets and just moved down. Not the most moral thing to do, but I'm still spending about $25 or so on food once I'm there. It'd be more, but I don't drink.
Week nights are always going to be a problem in this city (unless it's Thursday or Monday Night Football) because of driving distances, and work schedules. However, I do think that we'll see a big bump in attendance this summer as the team continues to dominate the rest of the league.
This brings up a good point, MMP just isn't in a highly populated area. People leave the area at 5:00, they don't make their way to that area of town unfortunately. I was in Chicago again last year and decided to finally visit Wrigley Field, it was the week they won the World Series and I knew they'd have events happening. The stadium is in the middle of a neighborhood, I was literally shocked that there were homes, hundreds of homes within walking distance. I don't have any hard numbers and this is just a guess but I'd imagine that most of the historically high attendance teams have stadiums situated in areas that welcome the average joe.
MMP is in an extremely convenient area of Houston to get to. The Dodgers are usually pretty high in attendance, with most of their fans dealing with more traffic/distance. Same applies to the Yankees and Angels. Same goes for the Cardinals... with very few members of their season ticket fan base living near the downtown area (and the way St. Louis is designed, most of the affluent suburbs are far west). And of course Wrigley Field is right in the middle of a neighborhood.... its been there for over 100+ years. If they had to build a new stadium today, it would be impossible to put one in a place like that. Cubs fans also travel from all over to go there... a credit to their superior public transportation system.
The entire city of Houston transportation infrastructure is literally laid out with the intention of getting people to downtown as efficiently as possible, there's no better place for the masses. Many people don't even need to go home, they just roll over to the stadium. The Astros tanked, they made no effort to field a competitive team for half a decade. It has worked out very well for the on field product, but a loss of fanbase was invariably gonna accompany it, that was the price for tanking. Fans weren't gonna come back quickly.
The Astros maintained top 10 attendance from 00-09, when they stopped trying to win. This city will support the Astros if they compete regularly. They city will support the Texans if they even bother to field a team. It's not a good hoops town, always been a struggle for the Rockets, but the other franchises have been well supported since the new stadium wave.
This is likely a relic of a bygone era. Stadiums aren't going to be built in the middle of neighborhoods (too expensive and probably zoning issues). They're either built in downtown in some area in need of "revitalization" or out in the suburbs where the land is cheap and nothing is nearby. Additionally, teams/cities want the surrounding blocks to be places where stadium-goers will spend money (e.g. bars, restaurants, shops) not homes. Wrigley is awesome for the reasons you mentioned, but it's kind of a dump compared to modern stadiums.
Do you live/work downtown? Many don't - *especially* those of us with kids. The vast majority of families are in the suburbs. So weeknight baseball games are extremely difficult for families. For me, I work in the Energy Corridor and live in Cypress - to make a weeknight game, it requires me ducking out of work early and heading north and then fighting traffic to the Hardy. I'd wager my situation is far more common than easily rolling from a downtown office to MMP. We still have a (mini) season ticket package; we make it work. But it's not easy and I get a little testy when people just assume it is because it might be for them. BTW, it's also not cheap. If my wife and I go, not only do we have to head north and tend to the kids, but we have to have a babysitter, too. That + parking is easily $50+ bucks before we've even stepped foot in the stadium. We paid for the tickets already - but they're... I think $40/50 each? It's a damn-near $150+ night for us. I don't disagree they eroded their fan base with terrible seasons that were followed with tanking. But getting to Minute Maid Park if you don't work AND live in downtown is a bit of a chore.
I live in the Jersey Village area myself, so our situations are pretty similar. And yes, it is a b**** getting to games. The fact is that no location in Houston is ideal, our sprawl is outta control. If you put it on the North or southsides then somebody has a more difficult commute. If you have to get on a freeway at 5, any freeway, you aren't gonna have a good time. Unless they literally built it near 290, your trip to the game was gonna be a b**** no matter what. I imagine getting to the dome would be an even bigger pain in the ass. But the largest swath of people on weekdays is in and around downtown, and it is a centralized location.
I should add driving anywhere in Houston from 5-7 sucks big donkey d**k. I hate it with a burning passion. That's why I got an apartment not too far from my job. 290 in particular is like some sick form of torture. If I had to deal with traffic every f**king day driving to one of the suburbs I may have committed suicide by now.
They work downtown... I would guess the vast majority of them do not live downtown. That's the rub. And I'm not arguing downtown is a bad location, per se. I just don't think workers in downtown necessarily translate into MMP attendees. I do think, as another poster suggested, a more suburban location would probably lead to better attendance. I mean, if MMP was in Katy.... But that's not tenable and I'm not suggesting it should have been. Urban sprawl just makes *any* location difficult.
Not sure the best location, but the population center for Houston is 8 miles west-southwest of downtown (Westpark Toll Road about halfway between 610 and Beltway 8). I do like the downtown location for weekend games. Weekday games just are not enjoyable to me due to traffic, location, and bad luck (just keep going to long games).
Living out by 99 and 59.... It's too damn far with traffic in the equation for a weeknight game. If it was closer I'd try more.
