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2007 Attendance

Discussion in the NPB News forum
2007 Attendance
Rumors of NPB's demise have been greatly exaggerated by the English speaking press. And to emphasize this point, just have a look at the Pacific League 2007 attendance figures:
Team        Games Attendance   Avg.   Diff
SoftBank 72 2,307,160 32,044 13.2%
Nippon Ham 72 1,833,054 25,459 14.3%
Lotte 72 1,558,430 21,645 15.5%
Orix 72 1,137,186 15,794 -18.2%
Rakuten 72 1,117,369 15,519 17.4%
Seibu 72 1,093,471 15,187 -8.6%
Total 432 9,046,670 20,941 6.1%
All six PL teams surpassed the 1 million mark, SoftBank continuing to out do themselves year after year. For the past three years (and to see where the "Diff" column came from), please see this Google spreadsheet.

Of note, one factor in the increase in overall attendance in the Pacific League was an increase in the number of games from 68 games at home to 72. Still, the average attendance did have a very slight increase.

The Central League went from 73 home games to 72, yet also had an increase in overall attendance as shown here:
Team     Games  Attendance   Avg.   Diff
Hanshin 72 3,144,180 43,669 -0.3%
Giants 72 2,911,358 40,436 0.6%
Chunichi 72 2,390,532 33,202 -0.3%
Yakult 72 1,333,231 18,517 1.4%
Yokohama 72 1,231,997 17,111 11.3%
Hiroshima 72 1,129,061 15,681 11.8%
Total 432 12,140,359 28,103 2.2%
The three year historical record can be found on this Google spreadsheet.

The only way Hanshin can increase attendance is to abandon going out to the rural stadiums during the season. It will be interesting to see how they draw at Kobe and Osaka Dome next season while Koshien gets a face lift.

Chunichi tried to skew the attendance numbers by scheduling more rural sites during inter-league play (to show how much inter-league hurts them), but didn't really have that noticeable of a difference overall from 2006.

I've thought about extending the historical attendance spreadsheets to before 2005, but as we all know, those figures don't mean anything as they were very skewed estimates.
Comments
Re: 2007 Attendance
[ Author: NipponHam11 | Posted: Oct 14, 2007 4:10 AM | SFT Fan ]

With some of those numbers (especially in the PL), you can see where there would be a decrease in attendance. Orix has been in a steady fall since Ichiro's departure, and Seibu was not only missing Matsuzaka, but the fans may also have been very angry with the recruiting scandal that rocked the franchise.
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