Unlocking the Mystery of Rays' Poor Attendance

They’re probably waiting for the Buc’s season to start or the Ray’s new ballpark to get built. Either way, it’s a shame, because that’s a wonderful team they got there.

First off, professional stadiums should be, no rather need to be located near the majority of a cities population. South Tampa, St. Pete & Bradenton simply do not have the numbers to support a MLB team. Some pompous ass genius decided to put The Tampa Bay Rays in ST. Petersburg… ultimately closing out folks from Orlando, Lakeland &, North/New Tampa. Sorry, that is the worst strategic location of a ballpark, of any sport, in all of American. If the stadium was centrally located near Tampa Fairgrounds, rather than the far south corner of the market and the owner didn’t encourage Ray fans to run off visiting fans with F’ing 8" cow bells… maybe more games would sell out.

The only reason any games have sold out this year is due to transplants going to see their team play the Rays. Only to find an F’ing cow bell rung in there ear so obnoxiously they (I) will never return.

Go ahead and spend your money on a new stadium… in St. Pete. I hope you make it quite a bit smaller if you want your players to ever get the feel of a real sold out home crowd.

Rays Fans with Cow Bells are hands down the most annoying, inconsiderate punk ass fans in all of sports. Too bad for such a great squad of ballplayers to have to play for such a poorly thought out, laughing stock of an organization with ass-faced bandwagon fans.

North-side.
  If you don’t like the cow bells why don’t you take your * to the North side of the country and leave our state. I think it is genius with the bells if it is going to run goons like yourself out of our ball park. I would rather sit with 12,000 loyal Rays fans than 36,000 tards from another state that decided to move there stank * down to pollute our great state or better yet great city. Chances are your probably a Yanker or CrapSox banwagoneer anyway. Bounce!      

Good job, PasstheBuc.  I can’t believe Tampa will not support one of the best teams in da country.  We had an excuse in Chicago, it was called Comiskey Park. Fans, whined and complained and peed in their pants for years.  The ballpark was built next to a huge housing project, terrible neighborhood.  People were afraid they would fall out of the upper deck, whine, whine, whine.  Reinsdorf is cheap, Sox lose.  Kenny, Ozzie, Jerry and U.S. Cellular changed all of that.  Sox attendance is doing great.  Park was rennovated, housing project was moved to Naperville and Oswego, and Kenny brings in two MVP’s off the garbage heap.  Tampa you don’t deserve a franchise.  Mayor Daley wants to put another team in Washington Park, come on up.

As far as explaining the attendance I can say that, for me at least, the stadium location is a factor that should not be underestimated. I went to several games this summer and the trip from downtown Tampa where I worked to the stadium took me at least an hour and a half and the trip home to Brandon after the game took around 2 hours.  This made it nearly impossible to go to games during the week considering that by the time I would have to leave work at exactly 5 (I worked from 8 – 6) it to make the opening pitch and there was no way I would get home until around midnight.  This is mainly due to the fact that there are 3 bridges to get from Tampa and the surrounding areas (where most of the population lives) to St. Pete and they all suck.  Because of the travel issues I was only able to go to games on Friday nights and weekends and for the most part the attendance was close to sold out, especially on Saturdays when they would have a free concert after the games.  As far as the cowbells, I can tell you that plenty of the Rays fans at the games hate them too.  And the observation that the town simply hasn’t embrassed the team is sadly valid.  You don’t see people walking around in Rays shirts and hats in Tampa.  I’d say there are probably about 20,000 real Rays fans that go to most of the games (we recognize each other from the stadium when we’re out in the real world, it’s kind of creepy) and the rest of the general population could care less.  This is probably because:  1 – half of Tampa is either form New York or Ohio and have preexisting MLB loyalties, 2 – the team’s success is too new and it hasn’t caught on yet.  But I digress, if they want to improve attendance, they should consider moving the team closer to Tampa and out of south St. Pete.  The Lightning are in downtown Tampa and the Bucs are closer to North Tampa and their attendance seems to do fine probably because most of the population is already near that area and don’t have to put up with a long commute.

As a Red Sox fan, I think it’s really sad that a competitive team cannot pull in fans.
Having said that, I do think that it depends on the sport as a factor more than anything else.  I may be wrong, but I view FL as a football state first and foremost.  Secondary factors sound like they may be location and economy, and I can empathize with the economy aspect.  Fenway tickets are WAY too expensive.  I’ll watch from my living room, thank you very much.
Anyway, good to hear there are passionate fans for the Rays.  Maybe next year will bring more fans out.

Congrats to the Rays on an historic season thus far!!!