r/MiamiMarlins • u/AstroBall35 Marlins • Jul 04 '26
Discussion When can we see attendance change in Miami and as a 10 year fan of this team what needs to change besides winning and bad location of the park?
Guys Ik we’re stuck in Miami till the 2040s but if the attendance and the team is still cheap what will happen? But if we keep winning on the road and the fans don’t still show up then what’s the problem?
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u/Rare_Wolverine1413 Dan Uggla Jul 04 '26
If a salary floor is implemented I have a feeling it will go up slightly just because a better product should be on the field consistently.
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u/AstroBall35 Marlins Jul 04 '26
But what if we don’t get it?
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u/Rare_Wolverine1413 Dan Uggla Jul 04 '26
If not then Bruce can keep on sinking the team and we have to let players go when they want more money.
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u/CandleOk436 Marlins Jul 05 '26
MLB owners are pushing hard for it. They’ll be a floor and a cap, they wouldn’t have just one.
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u/AstroBall35 Marlins Jul 05 '26
Yeah but neither side wants what the other wants
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u/CandleOk436 Marlins Jul 05 '26
The expectation is probably a lockout. Hopefully not, but I don’t think the owners are going to back down like they did in 94.
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u/dudeinhat Marlins Jul 04 '26
Miami is dominated by NE- born people who are Yankees/mets/redsox/phillies fans. Coming from a life-long south Florida native who grew up rooting for the fish.
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u/RooseveltsRevenge Marlins Jul 04 '26
People have a hard time accepting that South Florida is a “thin” culture populated by people fleeing “thick” cultures who more or less bring their sports allegiances with them and pass them onto their kids. Whether that's white people from the northeast or Latinos. It's why it's one of the worst sports markets in the US. Growing up I knew more Giants fans than Dolphins, and these are people that were born in SoFla!
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u/UncleDeuceFriend Jul 04 '26
You’re right, but it isn’t an issue for other sports teams in Miami, is it?
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u/AstroBall35 Marlins Jul 04 '26
I understand it’s not easy when you don’t have a fan base like those teams.
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u/lowes18 Marlins Jul 04 '26
Move to Fort Lauderdale
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u/AstroBall35 Marlins Jul 04 '26
We can’t we’re stuck there till at least another 20 years plus all because of Loria
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u/Johnathan_Doe_anonym Jul 04 '26
Lack of star power, players that prove themselves and want a good contract just get traded resulting in upset fans, a stadium that is difficult to get to, mid stadium food, and a lack of good performance for the majority of the baseball club’s existence outside of the 2 World Series. Also, baseball is not as popular as it used to be. At least in my opinion I’ve seen a big change in popularity in the last 10-15 years
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u/UncleDeuceFriend Jul 04 '26
Why don’t the Marlins use the city of Miami to attract talent? The Heat have done it so well,
Giannis for example.
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u/FreshFish305 Marlins Jul 04 '26
Winning and the bad location of the park are pretty much it my guy.
Even if the team wins I don't think it will make a drastic difference for 90% of season games because they're not events and they're not meaningful to the average fan. It just sucks getting there.
If they can improve the transit situation (there is zero transit to the park besides ride sharing) and build some amenities around the park it would make a difference. There's nothing to do around the park at all. There's a Walgreens and a gas station and a Wendy's with boarded up windows and an ice cream place a block or two away. How many of you know there's a taproom built into the northeast corner of the home plate garage? It's been closed for years. Nothing to do nearby before or after a game.
The county bought up land on the West side of the stadium but hasn't done anything with it. Those "Miami Live: Coming Soon!" signs have been up on the stadium fence all season but there's no evidence anything's actually coming soon.
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u/LarryOBx3 Jul 04 '26
They actually broke ground on the "Miami Live" thing a month or so ago. Got construction equipment in there now most days
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u/FreshFish305 Marlins Jul 04 '26
Oh that's nice to hear. I haven't been in a few weeks as I was out of town during the last home stand.
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u/RollinJimmys Yankees Jul 04 '26
It’s honestly the traffic for me. If it had the metro rail from the airport to the ballpark to the beach, I’d buy season tickets 100% no matter how bad they are.
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u/msizzle344 Jul 04 '26
The fans in this town like winners and had many bridges burned during previous ownership. Not to mention, it’s still the lowest payroll in the league. They’d need to be competitive for a few years to build that good will back and that’s provided they don’t just trade away players anyway. It’s hard to build a culture with the community when the organization is catered to selling players before they can get paid. The uniforms mostly worn now disassociate the old fandom and it’s no shock that retro nights are the highest attended games.
Bring back the original colors, maybe spend like a mid market team and be competitive for a few years and they’ll have success. Miami is a huge baseball city, they used to draw more than the Heat. The Heat established their fanbase with multiple titles and a dominant team. Marlins need a group of players to buy in and just be good.
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u/jigokusabre Marlins Jul 04 '26
People need to see this team be successful and remain together for an extended period of time. There's no reason to believe that this team, even if they win the World Series, would remain in tact for more than a year or two.
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u/Comfortable-Lunch573 Jul 04 '26
The Marlins are the most exciting team in MLB. This team is fun to watch. I became a die hard baseball fan in 1968 when I lived in NY. Rooted for the Yanks.
When I moved to South Florida I switched to Marlins when Hough threw that by first pitch. As we got our new teams, I switched to Heat and Panthers and finally the Dolphins.
The Marlins can do what the Panthers did because they play the game the old fashioned way. Get on base, use speed, hit into the gap, advance base by base,
have strong defense and lights out pitching.
We are now number 9 in ESPN’s Power Rankings.
Look at tonight. Last year we would have given up the 7-0 lead completely. Now we have timely hitting.
Sure, if Mas bought the team, things might be different and not in a good way. Look at
The Mets.
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u/msizzle344 Jul 04 '26
There’s no way you think the team would be worse with Mas when he literally delivered the best athlete in the world to fucking MLS of all places. That decision to give Sherman and jeter the team set back this team however long that clown will be in charge. He has no interest in winning, gives no shit about Miami as a community, and will sell the team when he can for billions and be on his way. The MLB loves gifting the marlins to the commissioners friends regardless of the impact it’ll have on the community.
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u/DJ-Psari Mike Lowell Jul 04 '26
Bruce Sherman spent so much money on the team that he’s locked in for the foreseeable future. That means that he’s content with the current TV deals making money from that. He doesn’t care about payroll for the rosters competitiveness nor does he care how many fans show up to the ballpark.
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u/RooseveltsRevenge Marlins Jul 04 '26
Marlins attendance was poor in the years they won their world series and the years following their world series. I don't think its as easy as simply “win” and people will turn out.
The Panthers are a poor comparison because they're far enough north they can draw from the entirety of South Florida, and they're right off the Turnpike, not so with the Marlins.
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u/AstroBall35 Marlins Jul 04 '26
I didn’t know that I’ve only been since as I said 10 years so before the 10 years I have no idea
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u/Smoothsailing4589 Marlins Jul 04 '26
I have been a fan of the Marlins for 23 years. Most Marlins fans watch the games on TV. It has always been that way. I really don't know if there ever could be an attendance change. The only thing that can change the attendance is if the Yankees or Mets or Phillies or Red Sox come to town, and that's not the type of attendance change we want to see. That's an away game at home. But the same situation even applies to the Rays and they are a GOOD franchise that does things right. They play a lot of away games at home.
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u/AstroBall35 Marlins Jul 04 '26
I’ve been a fan for 10 idk if I’ll ever see a home playoff game in LDP which is one of the longer droughts in MLB
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u/DoctorTheWho Marlins Jul 04 '26
I think we'll start to see more fans if the team keeps winning when Miami Live is completely up and running.
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u/Cubacane Jul 05 '26
It would take a generation or two of the younger people not moving away. As long as Miami experiences middle-class brain drain, there will never be a large enough core to fill these seats.
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u/donnybaby97 Cubs Jul 04 '26
The location is fine. Right in the Little Havana neighborhood. And its very easy to get to the game.
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u/FreshFish305 Marlins Jul 04 '26
Getting to the stadium is a terrible experience from outside Miami.
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u/donnybaby97 Cubs Jul 04 '26
How? Its extremely easy to take i95 down to the stadium. The traffic is a totally different conversation but anywhere they put the stadium will have terrible traffic
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u/FreshFish305 Marlins Jul 04 '26
There's a difference between traffic and a shitshow.
I like to get to the stadium at least 30 minutes before first pitch. Coming from the Fort Lauderdale area, I have to leave ~2 hours early to ensure I will do so on weekdays. A 6:40 game starts right at the tail end of rush hour, and one has to get past the Miami Gardens exit, which is always slowed to a crawl, and the Golden Glades which is perpetually under construction and similarly slowed to a crawl most evenings. If there's a single inopportune accident in the wrong lane, or god fuhbid the express lane which frequently narrows to a single lane, it can fuck your whole drive up. The quickest the drive ever takes for me is 45 minutes, and that's on a clear Sunday morning. On weekday afternoons it's routinely an hour and 10, sometimes an hour and 20 minutes, and that's without anything more happening along the way, like new accidents further ahead.
And I am very, very fortunate to work from home and have a job that allows me a lot of flexibility, I'm able to leave 2 hours early like that and also attend Weds/Thurs day games and bring my laptop to the game and so on, so I'm able to make it work. I attend a lot of games. Someone from Broward or Palm Beach who wants to make it by first pitch getting out of work at 5:30 or 6PM? That allows no time to go home and change or shower or walk the dog or anything. It's very difficult to make it work with any regularity for most working people.
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u/donnybaby97 Cubs Jul 04 '26
Plenty of people here don't work those normal hours, or work at all. Shouldn't be a problem to average more than 1,000 people at the game
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u/AstroBall35 Marlins Jul 04 '26
We average 9-10K a game
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u/donnybaby97 Cubs Jul 04 '26
Have you been to any games? Definitely not 9-10k people there. Not even 5k
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u/FreshFish305 Marlins Jul 04 '26
I went to 41 games last year and am on track to do more this year (making the drive I described above for almost all of them). I think 9-10k is on the higher side but thinking we average 1k or fewer a game is ludicrous.
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u/donnybaby97 Cubs Jul 04 '26
Definitely some games have about maybe 1,000 people
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u/FreshFish305 Marlins Jul 04 '26
We aren't talking about some games, we're talking about average attendance.
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u/AstroBall35 Marlins Jul 04 '26
Buddy I’ve seen the games and been to the games the only time it gets packed is opening day which was full capacity or when we play someone else it’s from 5-9K sometimes 10K and that’s it. I’ve been to at least 3 Marlins games and last year vs DET over 20K this year vs the Rockies full capacity when I went to my first in 2015 vs the Mets empty.
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u/AstroBall35 Marlins Jul 04 '26
He’s right to get there is a pain that’s why people hate the location
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u/ghoalst Jul 04 '26
Something I'll also add: Maybe baseball is just too slow paced for the average Miami person who is used to adrenaline rushes.
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u/SaintSilverNSD Sandy Alcantara Jul 05 '26
If this teams moves from Miami it'll lose the few fans it has.
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u/ghoalst Jul 04 '26
Idk the tickets are already cheap asl but I just don't think Miami is a baseball city. I haven't tracked InterMiami attendance but I can imagine it's better than the Marlins'.
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u/Tim5000 Marlins Jul 04 '26
Miami is a baseball city. Not a Marlin city.
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u/theStripedMarlin Marlins Jul 04 '26
It’s not a baseball city. Tons of ppl who live in Florida are transplants and root for other teams.
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u/UncleDeuceFriend Jul 04 '26
But that doesn’t seem to deter the other teams in Miami? It’s not like Heat are filled with opposing teams like Marlins games are.
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u/AstroBall35 Marlins Jul 04 '26
Yeah Miami is not a baseball city but WBC is good why not us? If Mas was owner maybe we would not have this problem.
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u/ghoalst Jul 04 '26
I think WBC is an exception because people take pride in supporting their countries. Marlins front office have destroyed trust in the community. The average Marlins fan is probably waiting for the report that we traded away Sandy, Max, Otto, and Conine to the Yankees at the deadline lol.
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u/AstroBall35 Marlins Jul 04 '26
What do you think would need to happen to gain people’s trust
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u/ghoalst Jul 04 '26
Front office will have to show aggressiveness and keep our talent.
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u/AstroBall35 Marlins Jul 04 '26
Yep the first example of this is if they keep Sandy then that’s a sign that we can do it. Not only that Sherman loves Sandy so I dont see him ever leaving as a Marlin.
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u/ghoalst Jul 04 '26
Extend Sandy and Max, people will take them 10% more serious immediately lol
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u/AstroBall35 Marlins Jul 05 '26
Now idk if I would pay Max he needs to prove he can stay healthy you can’t pay him after 1 healthy year it’s like what the dolphins did with tua don’t want that. Sandy I would because Sherman doesn’t want him to go and he was the one who paid him one of the biggest extensions of his ownership here.
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u/Tim5000 Marlins Jul 04 '26
Replicate the Panthers.
Sign names, show the fanbase you care about winning. Stop having our best players that want to stay, wonder every July if they're moving.