The Braves inaugural season in SunTrust Park will end with the team selling more tickets than it did in 2016. Still, the team is offering discount seats in its final few home games of another season that fell short of hopes. Tickets start at $5 for each of the team’s remaining home games.
Through Wednesday, the Braves had sold 2,365,856 tickets, an average of 30,725. Those numbers are up markedly from 2016, when the team didn’t pass the 2 million mark until the final day of the season and averaged 24,949 tickets per game in the larger Turner Field. The 2017 ticket sales will be the team’s highest since 2013. If one judges the season on the percentage of tickets sold, the Braves had a great year. They sold about 75 percent of the available seats, up from just over 50 percent last year.
The Braves, like all MLB teams, announce attendance based on tickets sol, and not on actual fans at the games. This can lead to a great margin between reported and actual attendance. On Sept. 6, for example, the Braves hosted the Rangers in a double-header. Reported attendance for the first game was just short of 20,000. Reporters covering the game estimated the actual crowd at less than 2,000.
In an event, the Braves are reporting higher ticket sales in a smaller stadium. And the sales have not dropped significantly as the season faded away. The Braves were officially eliminated from the playoffs and clinched a losing record in the past few days.
Still, the team averaged 30,359 for the first five games of the season-closing nine-game home stand. That all but matches the team’s season average.
Player turnover and losing usually mean a big decline in attendance for any professional franchise. However, the Braves move to the suburbs and to a stadium surrounded by fan-friendly amenities appears to have staunched that, at least for this year.
And the season wasn’t a lost cause all the way. In fact, just over two months ago, the Braves put together a modest rally to reach .500 after 90 games. They were within 10 games of first place and only half a dozen out of a wildcard spot. The Braves then lost 38 of their next 70 games to fall 24.5 games behind the Nationals.
