Father's Day attracts largest 15-game attendance day since 2008
Third Weekend to Top 1.6 Million Before the Start of Summer; MLB Attendance 7.6 Percent Ahead of Last Year
Sunday's 15-game Father's Day slate averaged 38,779 fans per game and attracted a total of 581,680 fans, the largest single-day crowd for 15 games since Saturday, August 23, 2008 (614,022), Major League Baseball announced today.
The weekend's total of 1,658,495 fans marked the best-attended 45-game weekend since the final weekend of the 2008 regular season, when 1,683,763 fans attended games from September 26th-28th. This past weekend was already the third of the season that eclipsed 1.6 million fans. The last time that three weekends drew more than 1.6 million fans before the official start of summer was in the record-setting 2007 regular season, which produced an all-time high of 79,503,175 fans.
Through yesterday's games, Major League Baseball has drawn 30,456,031 fans, averaging 30,826 fans per game across 988 dates. The last time that MLB drew more than 30 million fans in fewer dates was in 2008 (971 dates). Major League Baseball's 2012 attendance is currently running 7.6 percent ahead of the total through the same number of dates in the 2011 season.
The last eight years represent the eight best-attended individual seasons in baseball history, including four successive record seasons from 2004-2007.