Cardinals Attendance Isn’t Just A Baseball Issue

Attendance is down dramatically at Busch Stadium this season.

I was surprised to see a report recently that declared baseball attendance in 2025 is slightly up.

Obviously, the analysis concerned baseball attendance overall, not baseball in St. Louis. Attendance at Busch Stadium III is dramatically down. Officially, the Cardinals gate is off 23 percent this season, but that seems generous. Truth is, you can land a helicopter in just about any section of the yard without endangering any lives.

Put it this way - I never thought I would see the Blues filling more seats than the Cardinals. After all, the baseball facility seats 46,000, the other 22,000. But on any given night in April, it was a toss-up.

According to baseball-reference.com, the Cardinals are averaging 28,637 per game. They must be counting concession workers, parking lot attendants and passing river boat captains.

A number of factors explain the decline. To start, yes, the proud organization that is the Cardinals has not fielded a product on the field that generates excitement, at least initially. There is a perception among the faithful that the organization has become comfortably numb.

Winners of 11 World championships and 23 league titles, the Cardinals have now gone more than a decade without either.

The team has not captured a postseason series since beating the Atlanta Braves in the 2019 NLDS. And over the past nine seasons, the Cardinals have missed the postseason entirely five times, lost the NL Wild Card game three times.

It has gotten to the point where the team now wears a uniform shirt that says “The Lou,” as if we need something more dynamic than “Cardinals,” as if the “St. Louis” label is less than desirable, as if it would be better to be identified as a hip-hop group than a baseball team.

Wouldn’t you love to see the reaction from Stan Musial or Bob Gibson when you handed over “The Lou” jersey?    

And yet, through this steady descent in competitive achievement, the Cardinals continued to draw more than 3 million. The region continued to sail the “sea of red,” basking in the embroidered reputation as America’s best baseball town.

But mediocrity is a dog that won’t hunt forever. When the club missed the playoffs for a second season in succession in 2023, attendance slipped to 2.8 million in 2024. The 3 million ground established by the Whiteyball 1980s was surrendered.

The club’s inward-looking response did not go over well. Management allowed Paul Goldschmidt and two starting pitchers to depart. It publicly shopped third baseman Nolan Arenado, and made it clear it was not exploring the market or adding payroll.

General manager John Mozeliak now rivals Stan Kroenke in terms of fan appreciation..     

The Cardinals tied their anchor to player development and pinned their hopes on young players like Jordan Walker, Nolan Gorman and Victor Scott. As Andy Dufresne penned in Shawshank Redemption, “Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things.”

But sorry “Red,” hope is not open-ended. Those three mentioned batted .201, .203 and .179 respectively in 2024, which makes for a tough sell. Thus far in ’25, Scott has proven worthy, hitting around .280, stealing bases, playing well defensively.

But while Scott, Masyn Wynn and Alec Burleson have moved the needle, Walker and Gorman are hitting at last summer’s pace - which is to say they’re not hitting at all.

Still, the Cardinals recently enjoyed a nine game winning streak; maybe enthusiasm will spike.

But the status of the baseball team is not the only reason attendance is stunted. The environment is another.

People don’t want to go downtown, any more than they want to go see a ballgame in Gaza, or Kyiv. The many incidents of random and senseless violence in downtown St. Louis over the past few years have turned the “Knothole Gang” into the “Not Here Gang.”

To love baseball is one thing. To endanger your family, or your life, or your possessions to see it is another. St. Louis consistently ranks among the most dangerous cities in the country. When you talk about a “Wild Card” game in St. Louis, you’re talking wild as in “Wild West.”

The new St. Louis mayor, Cara Spencer, has her work cut out, to be sure. But fixing that situation, changing that narrative, should be Task Force 1.

Downtown doesn’t have a whole lot going for it these days, at least in my mind. It’s not like it’s a thriving metropolis, teeming with activity, culture and charisma.

That is, the Cardinals represent a rather important piece of the landscape. The baseball team attracts people from around the region - to downtown, to hotels, to Ballpark Village, to surrounding businesses. They do it - at least they used to - throughout the summer, for six or more months out of the year.

The brewery is no longer locally-owned, Boeing is no longer headquartered here. 7up split. The Cardinals give St. Louis a brand.   

Attendance at Busch Stadium is a baseball issue, to be sure. But the new mayor better recognize it’s much more than that.