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July 24, 2008

Lies, Damned Lies

Shrinking the Ballpark

by Nate Silver

Trivia question: Yankee Stadium seats 57,545 fans, which is presently the largest capacity of any park in Major League Baseball. When it closes this year, and is replaced by a ballpark that seats roughly 6,000 fewer fans, which facility will take its place as the largest stadium in MLB?

The answer is Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, which has a seating capacity of 56,000. To my mind, this is remarkable. Dodger Stadium is not some 1970s-era behemoth; all of those parks are closed now. Instead, it is a beautiful and well-designed baseball-only facility. Dodger Stadium doesn’t just have 56,000 seats—it has 56,000 pretty darned good baseball seats.

The Dodgers have taken good advantage of the large capacity at Chavez Ravine, their ballpark having placed in the top three in the National League in attendance in 43 of the 47 years that it has been open. What’s interesting, then, is that so many teams seem to be in a rush to decrease their seating capacities. Of the 14 parks that have opened since 2000 or are scheduled to open—I’ll be especially generous and count the Marlins’ proposed facility in this category—13 had reduced seating capacity from that of the team's old stadium, and the lone exception is Cisco Field, which qualifies only because the A’s refuse to sell tickets in the upper deck at McAfee Coliseum. Collectively, these 14 stadiums will take about 10.8 million seats per season out of circulation.

Table 1. Seating Capacities of New Facilities

Open  New Park          Capacity    Old Park            Capacity
2000  Comerica Park      40,950     Tiger Stadium        52,146
2000  Minute Maid Park   40,950     Astrodome            54,816
2000  AT&T Park          40,930     Candlestick Park     58,000
2001  PNC Park           38,365     Three Rivers Stadium 47,971
2001  Miller Park        43,000     County Stadium       53,192
2003  Great American BP  42,059     Riverfront Stadium   52,952
2004  Citizens Bank Park 43,000     Veterans Stadium     62,382
2006  New Busch Stadium  46,861     Busch Stadium        49,676
2008  Nationals Park     41,888     RFK Stadium          43,739
2009  Citi Field         45,000     Shea Stadium         55,601
2009  New Yankee Stadium 51,800     Yankee Stadium       57,745
2010  New Twins Stadium  40,000     Metrodome            55,883
2011  New Marlins Park*  37,000     Dolphin Stadium      42,531
2012  Cisco Field        35,000     McAfee Coliseum      34,077
      Average            41,915     Average              51,479

This phenomenon is not anything especially new. The median capacity of a major league baseball stadium peaked in the 1980s at a little over 50,000, and has steadily declined since, as the once-fashionable multipurpose donuts are replaced with more intimate, HOK-designed facilities. The chart below documents the median, maximum, minimum, and inter-quartile range (25^th and 75^th percentiles) of seating capacities at major league parks, beginning with 1908 and proceeding at ten-year intervals. I also provide the projected figures for 2012, once five new facilities come on line and the Royals complete a redesign that will reduce their seating capacity.