I was expecting 50/50 at best, turned out to be about 80/20. For the first time in my life, I watched a Yankees game without being surrounded by obnoxious yankee fans
First time they've ever played at the Trop in the playoffs. For a regular season game, if you're a Yankees fan, you only get a few chances a year to see them play in St. Pete, so it means more to them than a Rays fan, for whom it's only another regular season game. But a playoff game is a different matter. When it's an important game for fans of both teams, you can see a more accurate reflection of fandom in the area.
Some places are also just not bad to travel to. Tampa is a pretty cool city, and you can catch a game while in town. Yankees fans aren’t doing the same for saint louis or Milwaukee. It’s the same as Yankees stadium, it’s usually a solid amount of away fans. Difference being Yankees fans will fill out the difference in the regular season, whereas the trop doesn’t.
The Yankees fans did show up, but the atmosphere was electric in there for a heavyweight matchup. It was LOUD in there for the Rays, you could hear it on the broadcast.
As someone who used to go to games in the 2000s where the Trop was just super empty, it was cool to witness.
yeah when i parked i was worried about the ratio of yankee fans passing me to head to the game, but the Rays fans were loud and set the tone early, booing the hell out of every yankee player and over the top cheering for every Ray. My head hurt from screaming
I'm sure the Yankees being the opponents doesn't hurt, but I'm glad the house is packed and... good job yesterday. Maybe score a couple of more runs in game 2. ;)
Vindication for Rays fans. They were annihilated by the baseball media and fans back in 2023 when they mustered the lowest playoff attendance in baseball history since 1919.
Maybe the Rays fans do exist; maybe they deserve an accessible stadium for them to watch and support their team.
I've been to the ballpark and do not understand this narrative of accessibility issues.
It is in the middle of downtown of a major city (yes, I know, it's in St. Pete not Tampa). There are stadiums like Mikwaukee that are off of the side of a highway in the middle of fuck nowhere miles and miles from downtown. There are also fans driving to stadiums in places like Atlanta and LA that have much worse traffic than the TB.
It's a problem that public transit in the Tampa Bay is paltry. The location of this ballpark is literally better than most stadium situations.
It's because it's not just "the Tampa area" that makes up the Rays Market.
It includes central Florida, and a majority of the pop in st. Pete/Tampa live in Tampa, not where the trop is.
I'm a Sox fan living in Orlando, and wanted to go to the game at the trop the other day. I live on the west side close to Tampa, and it's an hour drive to get into the city from home.
It would have taken me 2.5 hours to get to the trop. That bridge and the fact the trop is in St. Pete does make a difference.
Brewers stadium is in the middle of Milwaukee which is a perfect spot right. It's 5 miles from downtown which you could a take a bus or a shuttle to get to. While the rest of the suburbs surround it. Majority of the people that live there root for their local sports teams too, no ones really moving for retirement or away from cold weather.
You would have drive 25 miles if not more if you're coming from Tampa and have to drive over a bridge which is what everyone is taking to get to St. Pete. The location is not very good even for St. Pete because its located at most at the southern tip so every one has to drive to the same direction.
Have you been to AmFam? Or did you google and see a Milwaukee address and call it there?
Literally the walk from parking to the gate is about a mile. It's an accessibility hell hole.
You're also talking like there's only one bridge into and out of St. Pete, not three (or four if you include the one in Clearwater)
"It's at the southern tip of St. Pete." So shouldn't that make it very accessible for anybody coming from Bradenton or Sarasota?
Citi Field is at the outskirts of Queens and inter-burrough transit between Queens and Brooklyn is dogshit, yet the Mets don't suffer from any of these "accessibility" problems.
The TB is at worst suffering from normal garbage American urban planning, and at best actually more tenable than many stadium situations.
Majority of the people that live there root for their local sports teams too, no ones really moving for retirement or away from cold weather
.
I don't understand your point in bringing this up. This seems to only go against your point that it's a travel issue not a fandom issue.
Literally, the walk from parking to the gate is about a mile. It's an accessibility hell hole.
Could you be dropped off? I'm talking about its location in a macro sense. It seems perfect, as it's located smack dab in the middle of the city.
You're also talking like there's only one bridge into and out of St. Pete, not three
Howard Franklin and Gandy are almost about the same, you can take a detour to Gandy pay a toll to save 5 mins. It wouldn't really help as much like if it was a bridge from Apollo Beach to St. Pete. Skyway is for people from Sarasota and Bradenton which is an access for that area but not Tampa. No one takes Causeway Bridge from Clearwater to go to the Rays game from Tampa. It would you take you another 30 mins.
"It's at the southern tip of St. Pete." So shouldn't that make it very accessible for anybody coming from Bradenton or Sarasota?
Sure but its still 25 miles away, a lot of people who live there are also older; maybe they can't drive or are afraid of Skyway.
I don't understand your point in bringing this up. This seems to only go against your point that it's a travel issue not a fandom issue.
The Yankees fans that come to watch the Rays aren't flying in from NY, they live here, pay taxes to the city of Tampa/St. Pete but do not root for the Rays. If they did we would have more attendance.
Agreed. If you had more fans, you would in fact have more attendance. That is a much more meaningful variable than travel time. So why do people insist on centering the narrative around location and accessibility?
I'd be much more sympathetic if y'all were clamoring for better public transit infrastructure rather than complaining about the location. The only bus that goes over the main bridge is a greyhound. That's fucking absurd.
Establish some public bus routes and a bus-only lane or two on each bridge and we're not even having this conversation.
I’ve driven across the bridge plenty of times and I’ve seen dolphins once. Maybe two times. And I don’t know what you mean by exotic birds but there are pelicans (not exotic) and other normal birds. Just putting this here for anyone who reads your comment and thinks “oh wow! I need to go check out this magical bridge”
You weren’t looking mate & if you were driving, maybe you shouldn’t.
All the types of herons, white ibis, etc are exotic to people not from the Florida area. I couldn’t get enough of it. Loved watching the pelicans dive for fish into the water.
I met people in Tampa Bay who hadn’t driven the 30 minutes to the beach in years, it’s crazy.
I look all the time, dolphins are not normal to see. I’ll give you birds though, maybe my definition of exotic is off if I see them all the time. When I hear exotic bird I think colorful
Yeah, I’ve heard a variation of this so many times and I get it regarding the population size.
The Rangers have the same scenario by being in Arlington - it isn’t convenient to get there from anywhere else in the DFW area, but the population size helps fill the stadium anyway.
I envy the baseball teams where the stadium is in a pedestrian friendly city center neighborhood.
There's no huge body of water seperating Dallas or Ft. Worth to Arlington. There's plenty of roads and highways to get to their stadium. They have 3 cities they could pull fans from but they average 30k with a stadium that seats 40k. Maybe putting it in Dallas would make it higher. Rangers fans aren't making the drive as much in the week anyways.
Do you think people in Dallas are taking the back roads through gang territories to Arlington?
You really don’t get it. It’s a weird Tampa thing that I don’t understand and didn’t while I was living there. So many people I met never went to the beaches because it meant they had to cross the goddamn bridges.
Eh rangers is within a reasonable drive to a majority of above-average-income DFW especially on a weekend? Closest comparison would be the braves. It’s more accessible than a few of the downtown ballparks (dodgers and white Sox come to mind).
Of course, a downtown ballpark has other benefits, but accessibility isn’t really an issue for the rangers.
You should come here and do it. See for yourself. Start in central Tampa, around Seminole Heights, then make the commute to the Trop after work in the middle of the week.
I dont think you understand these bridges. Its a bottleneck for 2 million people to get between land masses. No one was 4 hours to sit in traffic there and back
It’s the traffic lol it’s not normal city traffic after a game it’s a interstate that is already about 25-30 minutes long packed with traffic lol that’s easily over an hour to get home probably way more
Believe it or not, every team has fans that come from outside of the city to see the game and have to deal with traffic to and from the stadium. Shit I've been to Dodger Stadium once and after driving an hour on the 5 it took me half an hour to get into the stadium and then an hour to leave. They have one of the worst parking lot designs I've ever seen in a city with some of the worst traffic in the country and yet they manage to fill the stadium everyday.
The dodgers are in the second biggest media market with the most famous baseball player in the world with 2-3 other hall of famers in the second biggest city in a famous stadium that’s also the biggest stadium that is in the city and are two time champions going for a 3 peat. It’s apples to oranges but it is impressive they fill dodger stadium with how the parking is lol
The vast majority of fans from any fanbase come from outside the city.
When you go to a sold out game at Yankee Stadium, do you think those people are all from the Bronx? Or even all from the five Burroughs? Literally most of the attendees at a Yankee game are from Westchester County/NJ/etc. and they dealt with traffic as bad or much worse than this St. Petersburg bridge I keep hearing about.
When you go to a sold out game at Yankee Stadium, do you think those people are all... from the five Burroughs?
Is this true? I could see it being the case for most other MLB cities, but if there was any city that would not have the "vast majority" of attendees come from outside the city, I would think it'd be NYC. It might even be possible to have a majority of attendees be city residents.
You do realize those people are going to New York lol I highly doubt as many people would go to a Yankee game if the stadium was in Yonkers New York 😭 I’m sure they’d still get alright attendance but that’s the Yankees lol the white Sox have been a team for 100 years with 22000 or worse attendance for multiple years and people blame the stadium that’s in South Chicago but can’t for the Tampa rays in st Pete ?
I'm pretty sure you're arguing with straw men right now.
The White Sox have largely been a floundering and inept franchise more the last 20 years. No shit they don't get a lot of fans.
The Rays are the bastion of doing a lot with a little.
I don't think there's any weight to a narrative that the White Sox don't get fans because of the location, and that's also just not a narrative I've ever been exposed to. Certainly not a narrative peddled with the same veracity as the TB bridges narrative.
The rays have had ownership that’s traded away its best and most popular players for its entire lifespan which is maybe 30 years lol and yes people blame attendance for Chicago on the stadium and the ownership but that’s why they’re getting a new stadium. The pirates have a top 3 stadium with 1k more fans a game than the rays yet no one says it’s the fans fault cause they say the teams bad but they don’t even go to watch Skenes or oneil or whoever lol Hopefully this changes now though with the new rays owner people like him so far
It’s just an unserious argument that traffic in St Pete/Tampa/wherever is unique and worse than Los Angeles or New York, and people who have lived in real cities are going to treat it as such.
The traffic isn’t in the city the team is in is the point 😭 there’s traffic in st Pete then on the interstate for forever lol then you can deal with the Tampa traffic after. Once you deal with New York traffic you’re done but you have a 30 minute drive even if there isn’t anyone in the interstate from st Pete to Tampa then you have to deal with Tampa’s traffic. Just cause you don’t deal with it doesn’t mean it ain’t true lol
This is a new level of copium. The stadium was full of yankee fans that had no trouble driving across a bridge. Rays fans don’t exist, just like marlins fans. Manfred should force both teams to move to new cities where fans actually care.
dude stfu this is something we can use as an example when people mention Knicks fans at Sixers games. There were tons of Knicks fans at this baseball game last night and for that I am extremely grateful, but ultimately it just comes down to numbers and NYC population is too fuckin close to Philadelphia and too fuckin overbearing in the Tampa region that it’s an unstoppable tidal wave in certain playoff situations
Does that actually change anything though? Like genuinely for you? Doesn't combat the fact that they've had years of not being able to consistently bring in fans, and that's a bigger issue for long time term viability
It’s not that deep buddy. How did me say setting a reminder for 2029 get you on a soapbox about the Phillies. I am very shocked that my team that almost collapsed out of the playoffs got beat in the wild card.
It was quite a few Rays fans, enough to make a difference between "playing against a popular team" and "might as well be a road game".
Maybe im just dumb but I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn't closer to majority Yanks, for the same reasons outlined in the article. Even if it was 50% Yankees fans, that still means more Rays fans showed up than their 2023 series according to the article.
I just think its nice the local support seems to have ticked up enough to not let the stadium turn into Yankees land 🤷♂️
Probably because you had tinted colored glasses. The Rays don't have 30k fans in the entire state to fill the Trop. 28th in attendence despite leading the AL only behind Miami and a team playing in a AAA ballpark is absolutely pathetic. Had to play the Yankees to get any crowd to show up. Stats don't lie.
Weird that thousands of Yankees fans decided to buy and wear Rays merch to the game and cheer for the Rays then, surely people are just as motivated to go to a weekday day game in the middle of July than they are a Saturday night ALDS game 1, so theres no way they could've done above average numbers. Flawless logic, thanks for your thorough analysis
You’re here too 😭 you’re so obsessed about the rays lol it’s okay Baltimore has our attendance issue in a amazing stadium and lost their best players it’s okay
Exactly. This is the point. If it wasn’t the Yankees we can’t say the stadium would be sold out. A sell out doesn’t measure which fans show up, just that all the seats are sold
It was loud for the rays. But I was listening on the radio and early in the game it was loud both ways. Yankees fans got taken out of it with the no hit bid and after the HR
"The Rays sold out" = "they got a lot of fans there" = "they got more fans than expected"
They're not the same point, but theyre related, and if the sell out was only due to Yankees fans and no Rays fans showed I wouldn't have made my initial comment anyways
I thought rays fans were solid. They were loud and there was enough of them on the broadcast in the stands. But there was a lot of Yankees fans too.
I can confidently say as a New York sports fan that they would have sold out no matter what. If rays fans didn’t show up the Yankees fans would have especially in FL where a lot of people don’t even have to fly down from NY. But like I said, it wasn’t 70-30 Yankees like some people claimed. Felt like 50-50 based on eyeballing the stands or maybe 45-55 rays-Yankees
Seems like leery Rays fans have finally decided to commit to the team after the team committed to staying in Tampa with the new park. I imagine the last 5-7 years of relocation chatter regarding the Rays would’ve made a portion of fans support the team from a distance and now those folks seem to be locked in. Good for them, good for the flappy bois.
People overlook the attendance swing after Stu sold. They started taking the tarps off the third level towards the end of the season.
Turns out when you no longer have an owner who threatens to move the team part-time to another country in the run up to a playoff series people feel a lot more excited about supporting them.
Been to many rays games as a Yankee fan last night was the best turnout I've ever seen for them. It was so loud. Like it should be, when your team was in first place most of the year.
It was a very pleasant surprise, glad the Rays fans showed up. I was definitely expecting it to be a much more pro Yankees crowd. Hopefully this is an indicator that Rays attendance will improve, especially with the new stadium.
I was there last night and I would best guess 70-30 Rays to Yankees fans.
They would have been able to make some noise, they just never had a chance.
The other thing I noticed was that the Rays fans were fired up!! This was before the game. Squashing every Yankees fan’s attempt to get a let’s go Yankees chant going with a Fvck the Yankees in reply hundreds deep. It the most hyped I’d ever seen a Rays crowd ever in my 20 years of going to games.
Yankees fans def got quiet after the HR and in the context of getting no hit. I was listening early on the radio and To start the game it was loud all the time both ways.
I was there as a Yankees fan. It was probably 60-40 Rays fans, but my goodness were you all loud last night. Never been in an atmosphere anything like that in a baseball game in Florida. Good on ya
They Gave us a 2pm Playoff game a few years ago and no one was going to that, I went to a few games this year at the Trop and the crowds were HUGE.
It's not that we dont have fans or dont care, we just live in a area with LOTS of things to do, just yesterday we had a Lightning Hockey home game, a USF college football game at Raymond James and a Rowdies Soccer game about 6 blocks from the Trop.
We will pack the Trop easy on a Saturday night... But 2pm on a Tuesday? Everyone at Work and school around here....
It also didn't help previous that Stu pretty much went out of his way to alienate the fans, and this year the new owners actually listened to the fans and vastly improved the experience
Blame former owner management for making the team feel like a burden to Tampa.
Stuart Sternberg didn't care for the city, being from Brooklyn, gave Tampa no payroll to keep star players, and kept trying to relocate. And Vince Naimoli straight up hated the city and fans.
Yankees pack out all over the country. Marlins games usually have 200 people and I went to a Yankees game and it was like going to an actual baseball game
Was there and the boos whenever the Yankeess came up was much louder than any cheers for them, and the home run by Aranda was deafening with how loud the croud was
This Rays team deserves to play in front of a sellout every single home game. Everyone in their organization from players, to coaches, to front office have done an amazing job.
Anyone who wants to claim there wasn’t that many Yankees fans just listen to the broadcast when Austin wells gets the hit. It wasn’t 70-30 yanks that’s ridiculous but it was def 50-50 at the very least
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u/foomits Tampa Bay Rays 17h ago
ratio of rays fans to yankees was much better than expected. have to imagine the stadium announcement drummed up some additional excitement/support.