2008 NPB Attendance Numbers

» 28 November 2008 » In npb »

The excellent Pro Baseball Attendance Ranking site has posted the NPB’s 2008 attendance numbers, and I’ve translated them into English here. Attendance was up about 2% in 2008, and four teams drew over 2m fans.

Team 2008 2007 change % change
Hanshin 2,976,754 3,144,180 -167,426 -5.32%
Yomiuri 2,876,274 2,911,358 -35,084 -1.21%
Chunichi 2,427,805 2,390,532 37,273 1.56%
Softbank 2,250,044 2,307,160 -57,116 -2.48%
Nippon Ham 1,873,931 1,833,054 40,877 2.23%
Chiba Lotte 1,601,632 1,558,430 43,202 2.77%
Seibu 1,413,583 1,093,471 320,112 29.27%
Hiroshima 1,390,680 1,129,061 261,619 23.17%
Yakult 1,281,714 1,333,231 -51,517 -3.86%
Orix 1,266,765 1,137,186 129,579 11.39%
Rakuten 1,149,061 1,117,369 31,692 2.84%
Yokohama 1,129,954 1,231,997 -102,043 -8.28%
Total 21,638,197 21,187,029 451,168 2.13% 

Seibu, Orix, and Hiroshima all improved on the field and were rewarded with higher attendance. 2008 was also the last season for Hiroshima Civic Stadium, which probably helped the Carp’s attendance as well. Hanshin’s attendance took a dip but they still led the league overall. Yokohama’s drop is likely attributable to the fact that they spent another year in the Central League’s basement.

Here are the per game averages:

Team Avg. Attendance Capacity % full
Hanshin 41,344 46,229 89%
Yomiuri 39,948 46,314 86%
Chunichi 33,720 38,414 88%
Softbank 31,251 35,773 87%
Nippon Ham 26,027 42,126 62%
Chiba Lotte 22,245 30,011 74%
Seibu 19,633 33,229 59%
Hiroshima 19,315 31,984 60%
Yakult 17,802 36,011 49%
Orix 17,594 36,477 48%
Rakuten 15,959 22,187 72%
Yokohama 15,694 30,000 52%
averages 25,044 35,730 70%

The capacity figure may be a little misleading as every team except Lotte played home games in 2008 away from it’s primary home stadium. Hanshin, for example, played 9games at Osaka’s Kyocera Dome, which is smaller than their primary home stadium Koshien.

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  1. myworldofbaseball » Blog Archive » Japanese Attendance Figures 30/11/2008 at 9:14 am

    [...] For those interested in looking at the attendance figures for baseball in Japan you can go here: http://www.npbtracker.com/2008/11/2008-npb-attendance-numbers/#content [...]