On last night's edition of Baseball Tonight, Buster Olney and Eduardo Perez both hit the nail on the head as to why the Tampa Bay Rays struggle to attract fans to attend their home games despite the team being in first place. Buster Olney summed it up by saying that playing four good months of baseball does not make up for ten bad years.
Fan attendance does not increase until after a team has had success. In my years of attending baseball games, I saw this situation with the Mets in the late 80s and the Yankees in the late 90s. In 1986 the Mets won 108 games and won the World Series. In 1989 the Mets won only 87 games and finished in second place. Yet the Mets had higher attendance in 1989 than they did in 1986. Why? Because in the four years prior to 1989, the Mets had won a World Series, been to the post-season twice, and won an average of over 19 more regular season games than they did the four years prior to the 1986 season.
The Yankees have drawn more fans every single year since 1995. That means attendance has been significantly higher in the years after the Yankees last won a World Series than during the years the Yankees held their dominance over all of the baseball by winning 4 World Series titles from 1996 to 2000.
So until the Rays have at least a couple years of success as a team, attendance is going to continue to be low.
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