Shelby, NC — I stumbled upon some information while searching for something totally different from this subject. It seems there has been some controversy about the attendance numbers coming from the American Legion World Series contests. After finding this little piece of information, I decided to dig a little deeper, and the results are even more controversial.
The document linked below is from the American Legion World Series Media Guide 2022. The content consists of two pages, pages 21 and 22, that lists all the ALWS outcomes, teams in the championship game, the scores, the attendance from the final game, and total attendance from the entire series. The first entry is from 1926 in Philadelphia and goes through 2021 in Shelby.
ALWS all-time attendance numbers
To look at the numbers from 2010-2021, there is an increase of more than 115,000 attendees. From 2011 forward, the ALWS in Shelby.
Now, let’s look at these numbers from the 2022 ACC Championship Baseball Tournament:
This ACC Baseball Tournament was played at Truist Field, in Charlotte, NC, from March 24-29, 2022. The seating capacity is listed as approximately 10,200. As listed above from the ACC Website, the total attendance was 58,837 (for the 6 days) which is an average of approximately 9806 per day!
Whatever the case may be, those are some fascinating ALWS numbers. If you look at the tournament totals of the series, for instance, the 2017 series which lists tickets/attendance figures at 120,924. There were 15 games played. 120,924 divided by the 15 games equals 8061.6 people/tickets per game. Is this possible? Yes. Probable? No.
According to the stats on the ALWS website, the seating capacity is approximately 5500, so that would leave 2000-2500+ with standing-room-only accommodations. It’s also possible that this would cause some scrutiny from safety officials concerning crowd control and emergency protocols.
