Major League Baseball finished the 2026 regular season with its best attendance total since 2017, drawing 71.75 million fans and extending a run of growth to four straight years. One team sat right at the center of that rise: the Tampa Bay Rays, whose move back to Tropicana Field after a season at Steinbrenner Field delivered the biggest year-over-year attendance jump in the sport.
The Rays finished with 1,414,975 fans, a gain of 628,255, as they won their first AL East title since 2021. After spending 2025 in a venue that held just 10,046 seats, Tampa Bay’s return to The Trop opened the door to crowds that climbed past 28,000. The setting, the division title, and a more competitive roster combined to make the Rays one of the league’s biggest attendance engines.
Across MLB, teams averaged 29,589 fans over 2,425 dates, up slightly from 29,471 a year ago. The sport has not managed four consecutive seasons of attendance growth since 2004 through 2007, which makes this stretch stand out even more.
The top of the league remained familiar territory. The Los Angeles Dodgers again led all clubs, setting a franchise record with 4,034,219 fans and averaging 49,805.
Five teams cleared the three-million mark, matching last season’s total. Toronto surged to 3,338,878 after its 2025 AL pennant, a jump of nearly 489,000.
Seattle also made a sizable leap, adding more than 345,000 fans after falling one win short of its first World Series trip.
Chicago’s White Sox were another notable riser, increasing by 540,687 fans while reaching an AL wild card spot after three straight 100-loss seasons.
Not every market moved in the same direction. The New York Mets posted the steepest decline, dropping by 472,450 to 2,712,120 after a 12-game losing streak in April and a last-place finish in the NL East.
Houston also dipped by more than 255,000 despite winning the AL West with an 81-81 record. Kansas City, Arizona, Atlanta, Cincinnati, Colorado, and Philadelphia each fell by between 100,000 and 200,000.
At the bottom of the attendance table, the Athletics drew 799,240, the lowest total in the league. Still playing at Sutter Health Park in West Sacramento before their planned 2028 move to Las Vegas, they averaged 9,867 and included six games at Las Vegas Ballpark. Miami also slid, dropping from 28th to 29th in total attendance at 1,231,018.
Even with those pockets of decline, the larger picture points in one direction. Tampa Bay’s return to Tropicana Field powered the league’s biggest single-team gain, and MLB’s attendance trend now looks healthier than it has in nearly a decade.
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