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June 17, 2004

Lies, Damned Lies

Road Attendance

by Nate Silver

As much as it annoyed me, being a Pistons fan, to see that coverage of the NBA Finals was focused far more on the Lakers' demise (MEDVEDENKO TO TEST FREE AGENT WATERS!) as it was on Detroit's ascent (blue team wins championship in five games), there's a lot to be said for the presence of a villain. The Lakers have been so good for so long--so annoyingly, purple-and-goldenly good--for so long, that it was one hell of a story to see them go down to defeat, even if it came at the hands of a largely unfamiliar and anonymous team whose low-scoring style made them the basketball equivalent of the 1906 Cubs.

Lest you accuse me of some sort of Midwestern provincialism, it's worth noting that the rest of the country agreed--the Finals were the highest-rated in years. David Stern agreed too, and it was refreshing to hear him confess, during a halftime interview, that the presence of a franchise like the Lakers was good for his league, drawing lots of eyeballs and putting lots of butts in the seats.

Now that baseball has the sports stage more or less to itself--the NHL finals concluded two weeks ago, with the Dayton (OH) Green Hornets defeating the Saskatoon Moosecatchers in a thrilling seven-game series--it's worth considering whether a similar phenomenon manifests itself in our preferred sport. It is interesting to note, for example, that the Yankees are on pace to draw more than 3.2 million fans this year--in their road games alone. The Cubs are averaging a record-setting 40,000 per game at Wrigley Field this year--and 37,000 per game at not-so-friendly confines.

In fact, if we compare every team's home and road attendance, the correlation is quite strong. Here are the data thus far for 2004:

Even though the season is still young enough that the schedule has not had time to come into its relative state of balance (the Cubs have already played the Cardinals 11 times, for example, and the Brewers zero), a correlation of .56 is quite meaningful. If we take a look at a full season's worth of data--like last year's, for example--the relationship is even stronger, with a correlation coefficient of .68: