Does winning affect attendance for the Reds?
I’ve charted the Reds winning percentages and home attendance going back to 1985 to see if there are any tends with winning and attendance. The blue line is the winning percentage, and the orange line is the attendance.
A few things I noticed.
The attendance shot up in 1990 (the World Series season) to its highest point since the chart began tracking. The fan excitement and attendance carried over for multiple seasons after the World Series victory, even though two of the next three seasons were losing ones.
The attendance spiked in 1994 when the Reds had a great team in the strike-shorted 1994 season. That strike drove many fans away, because even with a good 1995 season, the attendance dropped. The strike-diminished attendance got even worse in 1996 thru 1998, coinciding with seasons that fell well below the standard set by the early to mid 1990’s Reds.
The steroid infused players and the national home run chase in 1998 didn’t do much to boost the Reds attendance (outside of games when the Cardinals or Cubs were in town), but a return to winning in 1999 pulled attendance up. That upswing continued in 2000, following a second winning season.
In 2001 the Reds began an eight year run of losing seasons for the Reds, and the attendance dropped, and was bad for six of those eight seasons.
In 2009 the US economy was garbage, and the attendance fell accordingly. But the Reds winning after that over powered the economy and brought out fans. From 2010 thru 2013 the Reds had winning seasons in 3 of 4 years, and their first winning seasons in a decade. That pulled fan attendance out of the doldrums, and attendance rose every year from 2009 to 2013.
The rebuild began in 2014, and the record fell, but just like we saw after 1990, winning can have a carry-over effect, and attendance remained high (although fell each season) in 2014 and 2015 as the team lost more and more games.
Finally, in 2016 the effect of the rebuild with no winning in sight pulled attendance down. Attendance in 2016 and 2017 are low, as the team looks to be in a holding pattern for losing – much like how a lack of attendance and a lack of winning were married together in the early and mid 2000’s.
Ultimately, the Reds attendance is tied to their winning. More fans tend to show up when they win, and fewer fans show up when they lose. This is generally the case as the trends show, although outside factors like strikes and a terrible economic collapse can force outliers.
Looking forward, if the Reds can return to winning in 2019 and 2020, it would be reasonable to expect to see the attendance numbers climb each year from their current low levels.