We expect many stories like this in coming days: The Tennessee Smokies (Class AA; Southern League) set a new single-season attendance franchise record Saturday evening after welcoming their 268,034th fan of the season.
The new mark eclipses the 268,033 total from the 2002 campaign, which was the third year of play at Smokies Stadium.
The team came into Saturday evening’s contest needing just 587 fans to break that barrier, and have averaged 4,115 guests over 65 openings in 2014. Should that number hold above 4,000 over the final four games of the regular season, it would mark the first time in franchise history the Smokies have averaged over 4,000 fans in a single season. The closest the club came to that height was also in 2002, when the team averaged 3,829 fans per game in Kodak.
Since beginning play at Smokies Stadium at the start of the 2000 campaign, Tennessee has welcomed 3,849,281 fans through their gates entering Saturday evening, and are on pace to welcome their 4 millionth fan during the 2015 campaign.
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