Crunching the 2011 summer-collegiate attendance figures

With over 3 million attendees in 2011, summer-collegiate leagues are proving to be an important part of the baseball economy. We’ll examine the attendance numbers posted today on Ballpark Digest.

First off: by our tally, 3.075 million fans “officially” attended summer-collegiate games in 2011. We report this number with a big disclaimer: there are many summer-collegiate teams and leagues that don’t report attendance, so this number is undoubtedly higher. Still, this is the first time in many years of reporting summer-collegiate attendance figures that we can without a doubt say there were 3 million fans attending summer-collegiate games. Almost a third of that total came from the Northwoods League — certainly the most well-attended summer-collegiate circuit — but we saw growth in the industry across the board. Out of the “major” summer-collegiate leagues (which includes the Northwoods League, Cape Cod League and Coastal Plain League, all based on raw number and history), only the Prospect League showed a decline in attendance.

The real growth, though, came at the next level of leagues. We saw a 157 percent leap in attendance for the Florida Summer Collegiate League, as the circuit has a more revenue-oriented business model; huge attendance jumps at Sanford (where the team plays at historic Sanford Stadium), Leesburg (where the team plays at historic Pat Thomas Stadum) and Winter Park led the way. The West Coast Leaague recorded a 43 percent attendance increase; adding Klamath Falls was a good move, and Bend and Corvallis both notched big per-game increases. The New England Collegiate Baseball League saw a 38 percent attendance leap, led by Holyoke and Vermont.

Here are the top per-game attendance gainers in the summer-collegiate world in 2011:

We’re not going to pretend there’s a grand theme when looking at these teams: in some cases the attendance rises are as a result of a new emphasis on the business of baseball (as was the case with the FCSL teams), some as the result changes in the front office, and some as the result of years of hard work.

Now for the bad news. Here are the teams suffering the largest attendance decline per game:

We’re not sure there are a lot of lessons to be drawn from these teams, either, except for one thing: many of these teams suffered through front-office and ownership changes immediately before the beginning of the year, hampering their ability to promote and sell sponsorships. Building a baseball business is hard work, and people underestimate how fragile a front office can be.

RELATED STORIES: 2011 Baseball Attendance by Average; 2011 Affiliated Attendance by Average; 2011 Affiliated Attendance by League; 2011 Affiliated Attendance by Total; 2011 Independent Attendance by Average; 2011 Independent Attendance by Total; 2011 Independent Average Attendance by League; 2011 Summer-Collegiate Attendance by Average; 2011 Summer-Collegiate Attendance by Total; 2011 Summer-Collegiate Attendance by League

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