MLB attendance totals hit 11th highest all time

Major League Baseball reported regular-season attendance Tuesday with a total paid attendance for 2016 of 73,159,044, or an average of 30,059 per game over 2,425 dates. This is the 11th highest-attended season in the history of the league according to Forbes.

The total is down less than one percent from 2015, when the league reached 73,760,020, though the drop is the largest year over year since 2013.

Four of the top five teams in 2016 are National League teams, and three of the five experienced a decline.

Other notables from the tally:

• Two cancelled games were not made up this season: Sept. 25 between the Atlanta Braves and Miami Marlins (the day Marlins' pitcher Jose Fernandez was tragically killed in a boating accident), and a rainout on Sept. 29 between the Cleveland Indians and the Detroit Tigers. The Tigers were eliminated from contention, therefore, the game was not rescheduled.
• The Cincinnati Reds saw the largest decline: Approximately 6,486 in attendance per game, which equates to over half a million (525,421) for the season. In the American League, the wild card-bound Baltimore Orioles dropped 10% (just behind the non-contending Minnesota Twins and Oakland Athletics).
• The American League's 166,907 overall increase is largely because of the Toronto Blue Jays. The New York Yankees have never not led attendance in the AL since 2002. The Blue Jays increased attendance by 21%, or 7,373 more per game than 2015.