This past Wednesday the Marlins held a home game against the Washington Nationals. It turned out to be a very exciting game that ended with a Marlins win in the 12th inning. The problem is no one was there to see it. When attendance for a Major League game is in around 9,000 then attendance is considered very poor. The Marlins would have been ecstatic about a number like that. Instead the estimated attendance was around 400 people. No that's not a typo it really is a four with 2 zeros behind it. That number was at the peak time. It is estimated that the attendance by the end was around 200 with a whopping total of 9 people in the outfield seats.
This number is appalling to me. Sure this is a match up of the basement of the NL east division and it was a day game but honestly the Marlins must be doing something wrong to put up a number like that. The Miami Herald argues that this is a good a advertisement for why the Marlins need a new stadium. Does a team that is going to draw worse than a class A team in the middle of nowhere really deserve a brand new stadium complete with a retractable roof? I would say no. The truth is that even if the stadium wasn't so far away from downtown they still wouldn't have drawn a crowd for a mid-week day game. The problem isn't the stadium. The problem is within the organization. They don't try to sell their product and when they do they apparently market to the wrong people. It's about time the Marlins realized that, in the popularity contest that is Miami, they are the nerdy unpopular band geek in high school and not in the popular crowd. It's about time to pack up, move to a new town, completely change their appearance, and hope for better popularity somewhere else.
What is just as interesting to me is the lack of attention that a crowd of 400 people earned on a national media scale. If you want a sign of the coming doom of watching sports live then here would be the perfect example but instead the Doom Sayers seemed to ignore the fact. The only mention that I heard in the next couple of days was during the broadcast of the Cardinals game on FSN Midwest. The topic of the Marlins was brought up in connection with a discussion of the small crowds they had seen on their recent road series in Cincinnati. Of course the Cardinals announcers are spoiled with a brand new stadium that is nearly sold-out every night even for a sub-500 team. The the question becomes what are the Cardinals doing that the Marlins aren't? The Cardinal's announcers had no solutions. The only question they had was why should the Marlins stay in Miami? This is a very valid question and I would love to hear the Marlin's front office's reply to that. Why stay?
