Most loyal baseball fans 2014

[trappincoyotes39]

Current 2014 MLB top-5 loyalty leaders and bottom-5 basement team standings are listed below (Note: #’s in parentheses are team rankings for 2013.)

Top-5 Teams – 2014 2013 Rankings

1. St. Louis Cardinals (#4)

2. Philadelphia Phillies (#2)

3. Boston Red Sox (#6)

4. Atlanta Braves (#5)

5. San Francisco Giants (#3)

Bottom-5 Teams – 2014 2013 Rankings

30. Houston Astros (#30)

29. New York Mets (#26)

28. Seattle Mariners (#27)

27. Arizona Diamondbacks (#20)

26. Colorado Rockies (#21)

The four emotional drivers of fan loyalty include:

Pure Entertainment:
How well a team does. But more importantly than the win-loss ratios, how exciting is their play? Sure, everybody loves a winner, but it’s important to note that win/loss ratios do not entirely govern fan loyalty. Even winning a World Series doesn’t immediately jump a team to the top of the loyalty list. It can add up to 20% to a team’s loyalty strength and that certainly moves you up the list, but it doesn’t load the loyalty bases for a team if you are deficient in the other three areas, which are emotionally-based factors that must be taken into account:

Authenticity: How well they play – as a team. And what support is provided for that? A new stadium is an icon for genuineness and substance being invested in the team. But more often – because it happens more often – a new manager can help lift this driver. It signals a change and when it is seen to affect how the team plays as a team, loyalty levels usually move up. It certainly didn’t hurt the Phillies. But you can’t buy Authenticity. The Yankees (now #6) had the highest payroll in baseball last year, nearly twice that of the Cardinals. Look who’s #1.

Fan Bonding: Are players particularly respected and admired? We recognize that professional baseball players are the best-of-the-best, but if you really have to think about “who might that be on my team?” or “Hmmmm, let me think,” or “Wait! Jeter. Oh, right. Never mind,” your score on the Fan Bonding driver is likely to take a bad hop.

History and Tradition: Is the game and the team part of fans’ and community/family rituals, institutions and beliefs? This is most emotional of values when it comes to Major League Sports, and is the driver that drives fans to angry outbursts when their team is at the bottom of the loyalty roster. It is also often the fan loyalty driver that accounts for nearly all the loyalty that exists for a team. For example, it’s worth noting it’s been 106 years since the Chicago Cubs won a World Series, and 69 years since they won a National League pennant, but they always fall into the top-5 teams when it comes to strength on the History and Tradition driver. It’s good to be strong there, but you need some strength in the other drivers as well. Otherwise, after a while, the team can find itself being called “out” by the folks who are supposed to be fans.

All teams – all brands, for that matter – can benefit from increased loyalty levels as they are leading-indicators of positive consumer behavior (however you define that for the category in which the brand competes), but as baseball is traditionally called America’s “National Pastime,” there’s a real emotional connection for fans. And, as this just the start of the 2014 season, we can offer fans whose teams are not at the top of this year’s list, a nod a and a quote from Hall of Famer, Yogi Berra: “It ain’t over till its over.”

For fans of other sports, 2014 rankings for the NBA will appear just before playoffs later this month, the NHL in time for the Stanley Cup, and the NFL rankings in time for their kickoff in September.

In the meantime, “Go (FILL IN THE NAME OF YOUR TEAM HERE)!”


Connect with Robert on LinkedIn.

Find out more about what makes customer loyalty happen and how Brand Keys metrics is able to predict future consumer behavior: brandkeys.com. Visit our YouTube channel to learn more about Brand Keys methodology, applications and case studies.



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[trappincoyotes39]

Attendance to date. Notice St Louis a small market team and they are beating out the game NY teams and only slightly behind LA the largest market


2014 Attendance Home Road Overall
RK TEAM GMS TOTAL AVG PCT GMS AVG PCT GMS AVG PCT
1 LA Dodgers 68 3,179,516 46,757 83.5 71 33,796 79.5 139 40,137 81.7
2 St. Louis 71 3,091,717 43,545 99.0 67 32,009 74.5 138 37,944 87.2
3 NY Yankees 64 2,748,589 42,946 86.5 71 35,737 85.1 135 39,155 85.9
4 San Francisco 71 2,954,060 41,606 99.3 68 32,624 72.7 139 37,212 85.8
5 LA Angels 71 2,737,628 38,558 85.0 65 28,630 65.9 136 33,813 76.0
6 Boston 69 2,519,680 36,517 98.5 69 31,539 72.4 138 34,028 84.4
7 Detroit 65 2,361,644 36,332 88.1 73 29,217 68.6 138 32,569 77.6
8 Texas 64 2,224,049 34,750 70.7 74 27,396 64.5 138 30,807 67.6
9 Milwaukee 67 2,300,506 34,335 81.9 71 31,798 74.0 138 33,030 77.8
10 Colorado 70 2,371,546 33,879 67.1 69 30,940 70.0 139 32,420 68.5
11 Chicago Cubs 67 2,188,927 32,670 79.4 72 33,335 76.9 139 33,014 78.1
12 Washington 68 2,179,163 32,046 77.2 69 30,705 70.7 137 31,370 73.9
13 Cincinnati 68 2,095,229 30,812 72.8 70 31,515 72.5 138 31,168 72.7
14 Toronto 68 2,064,659 30,362 61.6 69 29,122 70.2 137 29,738 65.6
15 Philadelphia 71 2,133,595 30,050 68.8 67 32,435 72.9 138 31,208 70.8
16 Baltimore 68 2,041,039 30,015 66.1 68 28,796 68.6 136 29,406 67.3
17 Atlanta 70 2,052,824 29,326 59.0 69 31,222 72.6 139 30,267 65.2
18 Pittsburgh 72 2,109,251 29,295 76.4 64 33,933 77.9 136 31,477 77.1
19 Minnesota 67 1,902,958 28,402 71.9 71 27,065 63.8 138 27,714 67.6
20 San Diego 69 1,885,887 27,331 64.0 67 32,277 71.5 136 29,768 67.8
21 NY Mets 67 1,811,465 27,036 64.7 71 32,492 74.0 138 29,843 69.6
22 Seattle 72 1,818,109 25,251 52.7 64 28,396 68.3 136 26,731 59.5
23 Oakland 67 1,683,212 25,122 71.6 70 29,077 66.8 137 27,143 68.9
24 Arizona 72 1,804,223 25,058 53.0 64 31,075 70.4 136 27,889 60.9
25 Kansas City 69 1,619,196 23,466 61.9 68 26,478 62.0 137 24,961 62.0
26 Houston 73 1,568,646 21,488 52.5 66 27,159 63.2 139 24,181 57.7
27 Miami 70 1,501,764 21,453 57.3 67 28,860 64.7 137 25,075 61.2
28 Chicago White Sox 69 1,441,215 20,887 51.4 68 29,401 67.7 137 25,113 59.8
29 Cleveland 64 1,212,077 18,938 43.6 70 29,255 68.7 134 24,328 56.6
30 Tampa Bay 70 1,248,876 17,841 52.4 69 28,445 65.6 139 23,105 59.7

[trappincoyotes39]

Looks like the cards should get close to 3.5 million by years end!

great ball park and great times had at Busch stadium my kids and wife love it. We where at Sundays game when they came back from 5-0 against the cubs to win 9-6 lots of people for sure.

[trappincoyotes39]

The cards will average over 40,000 per game this season at home and have a great traveling crowd as well.