Football season and the school year may have begun, but baseball is still hanging around in a major way.
MLB announced Monday that 1,553,235 fans went to the 45 games that took place between Friday and Sunday, good for an average attendance of 34,516. According to the league, that makes it the most-attended September non-final weekend of the season since 2015.
This continues the trend of positive attendance numbers from throughout the 2024 season, which dates back to Opening Day and has continued through the spring and summer.
Baseball's attendance numbers have been on an upward trajectory coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, and they went up significantly in 2023 when the league implemented several rule changes to increase the pace of play and on-the-field action. It's difficult to boil these wider trends down to one or two individual factors, but the commissioner's office is clearly satisfied with the results regardless.
Among the teams to round out their home schedules this past weekend were the Tampa Bay Rays, who swept the Toronto Blue Jays and improved to 7-3 in their last 10. The series' average attendance of 18,548 may have brought the league-wide average down, but it did help Rays fans break a brutal streak.
There was not a single game at Tropicana Field this season that had an announced crowd under 10,000. The last time the Rays achieved that feat was all the way back in 2016, one fan pointed out on social media.
While USA Today's Michael Lortz noted that the Rays' 2024 home attendance took a 7% dip compared to 2023, it isn't a stretch to attribute that to Tampa Bay going from a 100-win team to a deadline seller and borderline .500 squad.
On the whole, baseball fans came out in droves to cheer on their teams entering the home stretch. Many patrons can't afford to go to playoff games, so these late September showdowns can sometimes boast entirely different types of environments.
The regular season is set to come to a close on Sept. 29, while the postseason is scheduled to get underway on Oct. 1.