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Aaron Judge's well-documented 62-homer pursuit or Albert Pujols' homer heroics weren't a big enough attraction for fans to swarm to ballparks and return attendance numbers to pre-pandemic levels.
But leaguewide attendance significantly spiked in 2022 compared to the COVID-19-affected 2021 season.
The 30 MLB teams drew around 64.6 million fans to ballparks throughout the regular season. In 2021, 45.3 million fans flocked to baseball stadiums across the nation, according to data from Baseball-Reference.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, 68.5 million attended games in 2019. On average, big league baseball games drew 26,843 in 2022, a 5.3% decrease from the 2019 average.
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Two Washington Nationals fans watch a game against the Atlanta Braves surrounded by empty seats during the ninth inning at Nationals Park Sept. 27, 2022, in Washington, D.C. (AP Photo/Jess Rapfogel)
The Los Angeles Dodgers led the way with a total of 3.86 millions fans and an average of 47,672 per game. By contrast, the 102-loss Oakland Athletics drew only 787,902 fans and saw less than 10,000 on average per game. The Athletics' Ring Central Coliseum continues to age rapidly, and the team has been the subject of reports about possibly relocating to Las Vegas — among other places.
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The St. Louis Cardinals came in second place with a draw of 3.32 million fans. The Yankees were third with 3.14 million fans, and the Atlanta Braves drew 3.13 million fans to Truist Park.
The Toronto Blue Jays saw the biggest jump in attendance, rising from 805,901 fans to about 2.65 million.
The Cardinals, Yankees, Mariners, Dodgers and Mets all drew more than a million more fans this year than last.
View of a cutout crowd at Truist Park in Cumberland, Ga., July 30, 2020. (Adam Hagy/USA Today Sports)
Only two teams, the Texas Rangers and Cincinnati Reds, drew fewer fans than in 2021.
Fans were not permitted to attend regular season games in 2020.
A view during the fourth inning of a game between the Detroit Tigers and Los Angeles Dodgers at Dodger Stadium May 1, 2022, in Los Angeles. (Chris Bernacchi/Diamond Images via Getty Images)
MLB attendance had been declining slowly for years — even before the pandemic — after hitting a high point of 79.4 million in 2007.
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Viewership for baseball has been on the rise. A record 11.5 billion minutes of MLB content was viewed throughout the 2022 season.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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