Historical Royals Attendance

The four seasons played at Municipal Stadium at the beginning of the Royals existence were not well attended with a four year average just over 10,000 per game and the all time yearly low of 8,772 in '70. The move to Royals Stadium plus a pretty good club boosted attendance to 16,609 in '73. Another big increase came in '76 on the strength of a burgeoning powerhouse on the field. At 20,744, it was the first season the team surpassed the 20K mark in a season. Attendance remained strong for a long time, peaking in 1989 at 30,589 (the only season over 30K), and did not fall below 20K until the aftermath of the strike in 1995. The team has of course been terrible since then, so attendance has only marginally increased ever since. There was a small spike to 22,249 in 2003 thanks to a winning team, and another small boost to 22,196 in 2009 after renovations were made to Kauffman Stadium.

Another, possibly more revealing way to look at attendance is to compare it to the MLB yearly average. This paints a slightly different picture, one where KC fans are actually turning out relatively less now than they were even during the expansion years at Municipal. Attendance stayed above average between '76-'90 but has dipped far below ever since. The low point was 2005 and '06 when attendance was just 55% and 54% of the MLB average. (With the teams we were asked to watch those years, Royals fans can hardly be blamed.) The last three seasons combined have produced an average of 21,143, about 70% of the MLB average 30,172.