The Atlanta Braves are ready to fill their stadium again… will the fans respond?
It’s been a long time coming, so this announcement from the Atlanta Braves today was certainly a welcome sight to see:
Beginning May 7, Atlanta #Braves to Expand Capacity to 100 Percent at @TruistPark.
— Atlanta Braves (@Braves) April 28, 2021
More info: https://t.co/kRHCaYkehb pic.twitter.com/2C7bNdNqWU
That’s the headline part: 100% seating capacity will be available beginning on on Friday, May 7 when the Phillies come in for a 3-game set.
There are some disclaimers to note:
- Masks are still required at all times in all areas unless you are actually in the act of consuming your chosen food or beverage.
- There will be ‘hands off’ policies in place: mobile ordering for tickets — and for stadium entry, cashless concessions, and a “no bag” policy.
The biggest question for many may be “how full will the stadium actually be?” To get an indication of that, let’s go back to the year 2019 and review some (reasonably) equivalent games*:
- Tuesday, May 14 (Cardinals): announced attendance 23,718
- Wednesday, May 15: 23,367
- Thursday, May 16: 28,783
- Friday, May 17 (Brewers): 36,222
- Saturday, May 17: 39,121
- Sunday, May 18: 36,548
* data from baseball-reference.com
There’s another caveat: season ticket purchases are generally counted as always ‘present’ in the park, whether they checked in or not. In practice, that’s the case on the weekends more than for mid-week games… which is clearly also true for single-game ticket buyers.
Taken together, you can probably expect Truist Park (maximum capacity 41,084, but the record stands at 43,619) to be roughly half to two-thirds full on any given day in May… and higher on weekends.
Once schools close their doors for the Summer, you can expect a tick up in attendance as families would have greater opportunities to attend at that time.
The COVID-19 trends for Georgia are good: since the end of February, the average number of daily cases per 100,000 people dropped in half from 20 to 10 over the next 2 weeks, and has remained at or below that level (currently 9) since then.
This includes the Atlanta metro area, with only the Southernmost countries in that area having a slightly elevated case rate.
With that, it does appear that this is the right time to fully re-open the stadium — and the past month of trials at smaller capacities seem to suggest that the safeguards put in place by the Atlanta Braves are doing their jobs well.
Additional policies, procedures, and answers to common questions can be found here on Braves.com pages.
Sounds like it’s time to go visit the ballpark and root for our team in person!