It is that time of the year for another baseball season, the 2018 CPBL Opening Day will features the Lamigo Monkeys and the Chinatrust Brothers at the Taoyuan Stadium on the 24th of March.
For those of you that are interested in Taiwanese pro-baseball (CPBL) I put together a little quick guide to the 2018 CPBL season. Which include the coverage of all the 2018 foreign players, the MLB/ NPB/ KBO connections to CPBL and a few things to look out for this season.
Great article. I want to see the Brothers and the Guardians’ attendance go up to Monkeys’ level, then we can seriously look forward to a fifth team. Also perhaps enforce teams to pick a home field/market and stick to it.
Oh yeah, that is what I think when it comes to expansions as well. The league and the existing four teams just keep on building up this positive momentum and keeping the public image clean, sooner or later there will be new teams.
Localisation is definitely the way to go, just a much cost effective way to allocate resources into a single market. What I also noticed another good sign is more and more teams are willing to heavily invest into the stadium and hoping to delivery a better viewing experience for the fans.
Hopefully the city of Tainan can figure out that new stadium of theirs. But from my understand they tried to tender the project, but it failed to attract any bidding 3 or 4 times already.
Thanks. It seems like winning and better facilities boosts Lamigo attendance. I hope Fubon can do the same.
That certainly help them to some degree. But I think the main thing is they stick with the “localisation business model”.
Took the Monkeys YEARS before reaching their current attendance number. I remember when they first relocated to Taoyuan, there are hardly anyone at their home games.
There’s no MRT, no all the fancy stadium facilities. But instead of giving up, they just kept at it and continue to develop the local fan base.
I hope Fubon can do the same too, because right now they seems be doing everything right! Give it another 2-3 years I really hope they can hit 6000 to 7000 per game
If they were to follow localization, though, they would have to split the market with Lamigo, as Xinzhuang and Taoyuan are close.
Fubon attendance up 77%! Or, idiotic journalists don’t know how to compare apples to apples. If you’re gonna control for opening-season hype you need to compare first week of games this year against last year.
Hope you can do a proper comparison.
Yeah, I happen to have some data on that. The data is comparing with the same time last year.
Monkeys last 3 seasons first 7 home games.
Years- Total Attendance / Average Attendance
Monkeys 33.59% increase compare with 2017 (Same time)
Guardians last 3 seasons first 7 home games.
Years- Total Attendance / Average Attendance
Guardians 25.79% increase compare with 2017 (Same time)
Uni-Lions last 3 seasons first 4 home games.
Years- Total Attendance / Average Attendance
Uni-Lions 11.08% increase compare with 2017 (Same time)
Brothers last 3 seasons first 5 home games.
Years- Total Attendance / Average Attendance
Brothers -6.18% drop compare with 2017 (Same time)
Give it another month and then we’ll see more of a stable data, as of right now it is too early to tell in my opinion. But it is certainly a concern with the Brothers. Year by year drop, it seems they are start running out of their old “Elephants” goodwill.
Thanks for the numbers. Happy to see Fubon and Laying gain significantly. Hopefully this increase will persist throughout the year.
The Guardians certainly generated enough buzz the first couple home games. Now the challenge is how to retain those new fans.
There are a few successful and unsuccessful story in the past. During the 2013 hype, the Monkeys was able to retain those new fans, while EDA Rhinos got a sweet taste in the beginning and then decided to handle everything themselves and messed everything up.