Rays attendance....

[BULL-UT]

too many snowbirds down here.... the only really big crowds are when the yanks and sox come

[GoBulls84]

Here Here!

I hope everyone traveling to Tampa has a safe flight and if you have any questions about the area, feel free to ask.

How come your Pro baseball team can't sell out?

Plenty of reasons. 

First and foremost is the location.  If you look at a map of the Tampa Bay area, the stadium is in the southernmost section. For us, we are about 20 miles north of Tampa but have a 50 mile one-way journey to a game.  So you have 5 gallons of gas and parking before you think about tickets.  A lot of Tampa people have a "thing" about not crossing the bridge to Pinellas county.  Don't ask me why, I have no idea.

Secondly, the team has been lousy for so long fans aren't used to going to the games.  They have had a nice increase in attendance and TV ratings have almost doubled.  So they are creating interest which should continue to grow if they continue to play well.

Third, the Trop.  It is perceived as a dump.  I personally like the place for watching a game in Florida in the summer.  It is air conditioned and covered.  One out of 3 times that we've gone there have been hellacious thunderstorms going on outside and play continues.  And outdoor stadium would be brutal for the fans.  Selig should keep his nose out of their business.  When the time and location are right a stadiium will be built.

Fourth is economics.  When compared to the large market cities, this is not a wealthy area. 

Welcome to our Board.

I've said for a long time that if the Rays get a new stadium, it should be one with a retractable roof. Baseball is a game that is meant to be played outdoors, but as you said, the summer time weather in Tampa would make that impossible a lot of times. So have a retractable roof so that you can play outdoors when the weather permits, and close the roof when it doesn't

[nukebull]

Here Here!

I hope everyone traveling to Tampa has a safe flight and if you have any questions about the area, feel free to ask.

How come your Pro baseball team can't sell out?

oddly enough the Royals are last in attendence in the AL every year and are behind the Rays this year.

[GoBulls84]

Here Here!

I hope everyone traveling to Tampa has a safe flight and if you have any questions about the area, feel free to ask.

How come your Pro baseball team can't sell out?

oddly enough the Royals are last in attendence in the AL every year and are behind the Rays this year.

The Royals also didn't spend a month with the best record in baseball, nor have they been at the top of their division for 3+ months. Just saying...

[j@yh@wks]

Here Here!

I hope everyone traveling to Tampa has a safe flight and if you have any questions about the area, feel free to ask.

How come your Pro baseball team can't sell out?

oddly enough the Royals are last in attendence in the AL every year and are behind the Rays this year.

The Royals also didn't spend a month with the best record in baseball, nor have they been at the top of their division for 3+ months. Just saying...

oh 1985, what a year.  It's been a long time of suck, and i'm a little disappointed the rays aren't at the bottom of baseball with us this year. 

[planetgeorge]

Here Here!

I hope everyone traveling to Tampa has a safe flight and if you have any questions about the area, feel free to ask.

How come your Pro baseball team can't sell out?

Besides what's already been said here, the big one is lack of a season tickets because they've sucked for so long and the former owner was such a jacka$$ he completely alienated the fan base and the geriatric ushers were his personal gestapo.  Don't even get me started on that one.  Still attendance is up about 35% which is pretty significant imho.  If there's not a significant increase in season ticket sales and they're still not drawing next year THEN we have issues.  

BTW the Bucs and Lightning didn't draw well either when they sucked every year.

[GoBulls84]

Here Here!

I hope everyone traveling to Tampa has a safe flight and if you have any questions about the area, feel free to ask.

How come your Pro baseball team can't sell out?

oddly enough the Royals are last in attendence in the AL every year and are behind the Rays this year.

The Royals also didn't spend a month with the best record in baseball, nor have they been at the top of their division for 3+ months. Just saying...

oh 1985, what a year.  It's been a long time of suck, and i'm a little disappointed the rays aren't at the bottom of baseball with us this year. 

I remember a couple years back you guys played well for like the first half of the season, and then fell back off. In all honesty, I think quite a few fans expected the same when the Rays started off so well. That may be part of what's kept the attendance down.

[USFAlum1]

Why IS it that people in St Pete will travel to Tampa for Tampa Bay Bucs & Tampa Bay Lightning games, but people in Tampa can't seem to lower themselves to come over to St Pete and support the Tampa Bay Rays??

Key words there are "Tampa Bay" - all 3 teams are called Tampa Bay, but people in Tampa won't travel to see the Rays!  Makes no sense, and it gets old listening to poeple complaining that they are in St Pete

[Guest]

The problem is the number of games -- twice as many as the Lightning and eight times as many as the Buccaneers.

Then add in how many of those are on weeknights... which means driving home from work in rush hour traffic to pick up the family and have a quick dinner (because Trop food is so expensive), then drive back through the end of rush hour traffic to make it to Downtown St Pete for the opening pitch...

Finally, I think you over-estimate the number of Lightning fans from Pinellas county.

[Bull Dozer]

Here Here!

I hope everyone traveling to Tampa has a safe flight and if you have any questions about the area, feel free to ask.

How come your Pro baseball team can't sell out?

Plenty of reasons. 

First and foremost is the location.  If you look at a map of the Tampa Bay area, the stadium is in the southernmost section. For us, we are about 20 miles north of Tampa but have a 50 mile one-way journey to a game.  So you have 5 gallons of gas and parking before you think about tickets.  A lot of Tampa people have a "thing" about not crossing the bridge to Pinellas county.  Don't ask me why, I have no idea.

Secondly, the team has been lousy for so long fans aren't used to going to the games.  They have had a nice increase in attendance and TV ratings have almost doubled.  So they are creating interest which should continue to grow if they continue to play well.

Third, the Trop.  It is perceived as a dump.  I personally like the place for watching a game in Florida in the summer.  It is air conditioned and covered.  One out of 3 times that we've gone there have been hellacious thunderstorms going on outside and play continues.  And outdoor stadium would be brutal for the fans.  Selig should keep his nose out of their business.  When the time and location are right a stadiium will be built.

Fourth is economics.  When compared to the large market cities, this is not a wealthy area. 

Welcome to our Board.

I always enjoy watching when the royals are down in Tampa and there is that guy behind the plate that just yells at a certain player the whole game.  You can hear his @ss all the way here in nebraska

Ah yes the famous Rays heckler.  Dude is at every game and brings it the whole time.  Some people hate him but i on the other hand love him.  Every baseball game needs one or two people like him to break the monotony.   As for the reason for the Rays poor fan support it boils down to 3 reasons.

1.  Location.  The majority of the Population for the bay area is on the Hillsborough side of the bridge and since Tampa lacks a good or even below average public transportation system the trip to the stadium can become very expensive very fast.  Gas, tickets, parking if you aren't coming with a group of 4 or more or whatever it is etc.

2.  The bay area is a VERY popular retirement/snowbird destination for people for New England/New York.  This is one of the most enthusiastic regions of the country when it comes to their "home town" teams.  There are huge pockets of Red Sox and Yankees fans that will NEVER become rays fans no matter how good the team is.  These people are also the same people that swear that NYC or Boston are one the best city on the planet, LOL (Tokyo, London, Madrid, Paris, Amsterdam, and many other places **** on either city)  they really must not get out much.  

3.  Florida is not really a great state when it comes to pro sports attendance.  If you look at the numbers for most of the FL pro teams attendance is historically pretty bad compared to the rest of the teams in the respective  leagues.  For whatever reason FL is a college football state and not much else  as far as fans support at the stadium.