A lightly-impressive sweep is there for the taking…
Good attendance at Coors for this series: 31,851 on Friday and 34,076 yesterday (though the latter had a bobblehead promotion). But that’s actually less than the Friday and Saturday games when the Rockies visited Chase Field last month. Both of those drew more than 35,000. So far, the D-backs are averaging about 3,500 more fans per home game than the Rockies. It’s been a while. Indeed, the last time Arizona outdrew Colorado was all the way back in 2005. Both teams were coming off near-historic lows the previous years. But what I find interesting is how resilient attendance at Coors has been, considering the team… Well, sucks. They haven’t sniffed even 75 wins since 2018.
Since COVID, Coors crowds have been very stable: 31-32,000 every year, despite averaging 99 losses. This season, where they are terrible at a historic level, crowds so far are just 614 down through the same point last year. That stands in sharp contrast to Arizona, where attendance is much more volatile. Chase Field crowds have recovered from below twenty thousand in 2022, to 31,420 this year. If sustained, that would be the highest figure for the D-backs since 2003. It’s especially impressive considering the team missed out on the playoffs last year, after winning the pennant in 2023. It’s not as if the current fourth place in the division will be powering the Corbin Carroll walk-ups either.
For Coors has a party reputation, which pulls people in for reasons other than baseball. Our siblings over at Purple Row wrote last month: “Of the nine groups — about 15 total people — I interviewed, only two said they still actively follow the team. The rest were simply out for a good time. “I just come for the food,” one fan said when asked about why they still visit Coors Field. “We come out in the nice weather to have some beer, munch on some nachos, and watch a game.”… When asked, just three fans could name current Colorado players, and none could name a minor league talent or prospect.” That’s not exactly an incentive for management to improve the team. as long as the beer is cold and keeps flowing. Sometimes a fickle, results-driven fanbase is a good thing.