OGDEN RAPTORS 2019

ATTENDANCE CASE STUDY

Dylan McGee
SYRAUSE UNIVERSITY Sport Data Analysis 1
 Table of Contents
I: Preface
II: Introduction/Team Background
III: Did the Potential “Rivalry” With Orem Help Sell Tickets?
IV: Weather Effect on Attendance
V: Day of the Week Relevance
VI: Promotions
VII: Tree Diagram Analysis
VIII: Conclusion
 I. Preface
We’re all told at some point in time that we can no longer play the children’s game, we
just don’t...we don’t know when that’s going to be. Some of us are told at eighteen, some of us
are told at forty, but we’re all told.
-Scout Barry (Moneyball)

Never in my life had I felt something so relatable. Like most kids’ who signed up for tee
ball, I dreamed of one day playing in the MLB. It was a promise I kept to myself and my family,
although it was a fair assumption anyone could make if you knew me. The countless hours in the
cage, on the field, in the gym with my coaches, my Dad, and trainers, eventually led me to win a
sectional championship in high school and a commitment to continue my dream in college. Just
one step closer to fulfilling my dream. As time progressed, and reality set, my vision started to
distance itself. My whole life, I had prepared myself to take small steps towards my goal. For the
first time, I felt as if I was walking backward. After transferring from my four-year institution
and playing two seasons at my local community college, I had a choice to make. Do I continue to
chase my dream by playing baseball at a four-year college, which won’t satisfy me,
academically? Or do I take a risk, quit the game I love, and give the prestigious Sports Analytics
degree at Syracuse University a chance? The outcome may not have been what I dreamed about
as a little kid, but I know every time I stepped on that field, I gave my 110%, and that’s all I
could’ve asked. I believe everything happens for a reason, and my passion for the game, the
college decisions I made, and the people I met lead me into my true passion, baseball analytics.
As I walked through the halls of Syracuse University, I realized it was my turn to quit the
children’s game. With my strength in math and passion for statistics, I soon realized that “the
game” was beginning for me. Representing a team and helping them succeed through extensive
analysis is what I love to do. I love the game, and I love to help. I love taking numbers and
expanding on what the typical fan sees on the box score. I am grateful to be able to work on a
project like this, where I can use real data to help an organization like the Ogden Raptors have
more success.

II. Introducton/Team Background

The Ogden Raptors are an Advanced Rookie affiliate of the Los Ageless Dodgers in the
Pioneer League. The organization is a part of Weber County, located in Ogden, Utah, about 40
miles north of Salt Lake City. Formally known as the highest populated city in the state until the
1980’s, it currently holds around 87,000 residents and is known as the 7th largest city within
Utah. The organization began in 1977, and previously was a farm system for the Cardinals,
Expos, and Brewers. The Raptors have been under control with the Dodgers since 2003. The
organization had a storm of success in the recent past with a total of 17 Division titles, 8 in the
last ten seasons. They also have five league titles, most recently in 2017. Some notable pros who
once played for the Raptors include Cody Bellinger, Joc Pederson, Kenley Jansen, and Russel
Martin.
The attendance data provided only includes the most recent season (2019). This past
season was very successful for the Raptors. The team finished with a 54-22 record, scoring an
impressive .711 win percentage. It was a dominant season for the team and finishing 1st place in
their division. The Grand Junction Rockies finished second and were far being 15 games back
from first place. The Raptors ended their season with an upset in the championship to the last
place Idaho Falls Chukars. As mentioned, an awe-inspiring season for the team, but did the
attendance numbers reflect their success on the field?

III. Did the Potential “Rivalry” With Orem Help Sell Tickets?
Upon conducting research, I realized that the Raptors had a potential rival within their
division. It made sense, considering it was the Orem Owls, who were an in-state competitor and
only an hour apart. Their major league affiliate is the Los Angeles Angels, which only helps the
rivalry because the Dodgers and Angels are the two teams competing in Los Angeles. Once I
found this out, I tried to find instances where the media pushed these teams as potential rivals but
failed to find anything significant. The potential rivalry interested me because I felt having the
fan bases so close to each other, while their major league affiliates are considered rivals, would
be the perfect opportunity to drive ticket sales and bring more fans to these games. The Raptors
played the Owls 10 times at Lindquist Field (Ogden’s home stadium). Their bouts accounted for
about 26% of Ogden’s home games! A significant chunk of games that could have been
advertised in a way to drive revenue.
Maybe the residents and fans of Ogden/Orem took advantage of these games regardless of
no rivalry media push. Then again, they are so close; it would make sense of some of Orem’s
major fans to travel an hour to see the teams play. I figured that the average attendance per game
against the Owls would be one of the highest because of this. I decided to compare the average
attendance per game by the opponent to see if I was right.

To my surprise, I was completely

wrong! It turned out the “next door
neighbors” in Orem averaged
the least amount of fans per game around
3,250. I was stunned and realized that
pushing these teams as rivals would be a
great idea to boost attendance.
As unexpected of an outcome it was, seeing
Idaho Falls leading drastically in average
attendance per game (4,800) was just as
shocking. Considering my attendance data
is only for home and regular-season games,
I had no conclusive evidence at the time to
give me a reason why. For the next portion
of my research, I wanted to be able to
conclude why the Chukars brought in the
most fans.

IV. Weather Effect on Attendance

My first thought for the reasoning of the spiked average attendance against Idaho Falls
was along the lines of:
The four games against Idaho falls had fantastic weather, therefore drawing fans to go
to a local event that is outside so that they can take advantage of the day.
I wanted to compare popular weather metrics not only to these four games but to every home
game the Raptors played. I used timeanddate.com to find weather data for every gameday in
Ogden, Utah. I looked at precipitation, temperature, humidity, and wind as measures for each
game. Once I found the data and plugged it into my master excel sheet, I was able to run a
regression in EViews, looking at the overall effect of weather on attendance for the 2019 season.
By looking at the results to the right, we can see
“attendance” as the dependent variable. We will
use other variables (independent variables) to
compare the effect on attendance. The
independent variables are listed as rows below:
 WINPCT: Win Percentage (We will
look at this later in the analysis)
 PRECIP: Precipitation/Rain
 TEMP: Temperature
 HUM: Humidity
 WIND: Wind
For one of these variables to have a conclusive effect on attendance, we have to look at the
“Prob.” column located on the far-right side of the regression. If a probability value is listed less
than 0.1, then that corresponding independent variable is statistically significant in attendance.
For the weather metrics, there was only one relevant variable. As expected, the temperature was
significant at the 10% level. The coefficient for the significant variable explains how it affects
the dependent variable (attendance) positively or negatively. The coefficient value for
temperature regressed on attendance is around 17 and is highlighted in blue. For every 1 degree
of temperature increase, you could have expected an average of 17 more fans to show up to the
game during the 2019 season. It makes sense, considering fans don’t want to be outside to watch
an event when it’s cold out.
Precipitation, humidity, and wind were all not statistically significant, therefore not
relevant for any real change in attendance. I believe this was because of the small size of data for
each variable. According to timeanddate.com, the weather for most of the home games last
season was pretty good. There were not many games that had rain, or strong humidity/wind.
Since the data sample is so minuscule, it is hard to say that they had any overall effect.
Now that we know the relevance of the weather, we still have one unanswered
question. Was the weather against Idaho Falls above average? Could it have been a hot set of 4
games, boosting attendance? Once again, my hypothesis was incorrect.
The results were not what I
expected. The average temperature per
game was around 71 degrees
Fahrenheit. The average temperature
against the Chukars was only slightly
above average at 73.75 degrees. Not
enough to conclude the spike in
attendance. The results on rainfall were
the most exciting findings throughout
the whole semester. To start, it rarely rained for the Raptors when they played at Lindquist Field.
However, it rained more in the four games against Idaho Falls then it did against every other
home game combined! It wasn’t even close. Rainfall is measured in inches, and by looking at the
pie chart, we see it rained a total of 1.7 inches against Idaho Falls. The only other opponent that
played in the rain was the Rocky Mountain Vibes, with .04 inches of total rainfall. Even though
it rained tremendously during the four games against Idaho Falls, these games still shattered
attendance numbers. With the knowledge gathered so far, there is still no justification for the
high attendance numbers. There must be, however, so I continued digging for an answer.

V. Day of the Week Relevance

My next hypothesis stated:
The games against Idaho Falls played on days that usually draw in more significant
attendance. The convenience of the date caused a season-high in average attendance.
To test this, I started by regressing in EViews days of the week to attendance. Like
before, attendance is the dependent variable. This time, the days of the week are the independent
variables.

From looking at the independent’s in the

regression, we see that “Sunday” is not listed.
Not because the Raptors didn’t play any home
games on Sundays. Instead, when regressing
time-series data like days of the week, we must
eliminate one of the days for the regression to
compare results. If one of the variables wasn’t
eliminated before regressing, our output would
be faulty and could draw conclusions that aren’t
true. According to the results, Friday (at the 1%
confidence level) and Saturday (at the 5%
confidence level) were statistically significant.
Friday games averaged around 1,750 more fans
than the average game. The same for Saturday,
with about 1,200 extra fans in attendance. This also makes sense. You should expect games on
the weekend to draw more fans because this is when most of the working class have days off.
The regression shows nothing out of the ordinary. To give a visual, I created a treemap in
Tableau, looking at average and total attendance per day of the week.

Each square represents a day of the week, along with the total amount of fans who attended
games on that day during the 2019 season. The size or area of each day shows the average
attendance per game on that day of the week. As we can see, games on Friday and Saturday
averaged the most fans per game because they have the most significant area.
Now that we know that Friday and Saturday boost attendance, I checked to see if the
four games against the Chukars were on these days. It turns out that all four were! Even better, I
discovered all four games consisted of two double-headers: one on Friday and one on Saturday.
For the first time, we have a piece of evidence that can help us conclude why the Chukars led in
attendance. The significance of double-headers on Friday and Saturday were tremendous. As a
baseball fan, you would be tempted to go to a game when you have a day off. Imagine on your
day off, instead of one game; you can watch two for the price of one! I believe this is part of the
reason why attendance was so high. Being able to watch two games for the price of one is far
more tempting to spend your time on a day off.

VI. Promotions
Promotions are a great tool that is used to drive attendance and fan engagement. If done
right, promotions can help an organization generate revenue by bringing more interested
consumers into the stadium. If done poorly, they can lose consumer interest in the team as well
as going to games. It is essential for an organization to understand who their target audience truly
is and find ways to advertise their events effectively to the people who are most likely to attend
games. Many minor league teams play the safe route and use promotions as a small way to drive
attendance and engagement. There are other teams, which take risks and promote unique events
than can either be seen as a significant success or failure in the eyes of the public. An example of
an organization that has gone outside of the box for promotions would be the Savannah Bananas,
a summer collegiate league team in Georgia. They are known for hosting events that are unique
to their team, and because of this have built a massive fanbase and sold out almost every home
game last summer. I decided to look at the promotions the Ogden Raptors held during the 2019
season.
Ogden used a variety of exciting promotions during the 2019 season including:
 Fireworks
 Giveaways
 Discounted beverages
 “Date night”
 Company tickets
 Food drive
 “Signature Dish” night
 Taco Tuesday
 Jersey Friday
 School-Related Events
 I thought some of these events
were unique and could drive
attendance numbers. I ran one last
regression in EViews to confirm.
I was a little surprised at the results.
Only one promotion (a School
targeted event) was statistically
significant. I was expecting more to
be. I think a possible reason for this
could once again be sample size. Not
only did I have just 76 games to
compare to each other, but some of the promotions were only done a few times. As they should
be, though, because repeatedly doing the same promotion would turn stale, and fans would
eventually lose interest in attending for that reason. However, almost every event had a positive
coefficient, meaning they all did boost attendance. We cannot confirm these, though, since the
probability for each independent variable is higher than 0.1. I believe a larger sample size over
multiple years, would make them significant.
Some events bring up interesting questions for effectiveness. Fireworks are known to be
very successful in increasing fans at games. At first, I would have recommended doing more
Fireworks events since last season; the Raptors only held one. After learning from my Professor
(Dr. Rodney Paul), I found out that because of towns like Ogden out in the Southwest being so
flat, many residents could just watch the fireworks from their home or drive close enough to the
stadium where they get to see a free show! When you take in the cost of setting up the fireworks
and compare it to the number of residents getting a free show, it probably isn’t worth it to host
many fireworks nights. From that perspective, I agreed with the Raptor’s only hosting one
“Firework Night.” Another event interested me in particular: Date Night. I love the idea of Date
Night at first glance. It draws the younger audience to show up to games.
Young adults must be tempted to go to an event that they only have to pay one ticket while
bringing their significant other for free. However, for Ogden in specific, is it useful? Upon my
preliminary research of the team and town, I learned that Utah is home to the highest percentage
of those who practice polygamy. I was curious to see if this affects their Date Night numbers.
What if someone practiced polygamy, are they allowed to bring many significant others to the
game for free? Does only a couple get free tickets? If so, do those who practice polygamy feel
offended or uncomfortable in not only going to Date Night games but any games at all? It is such
a small and niche question to propose, but it does bring up interesting points. For an organization
that brings in a few thousand fans per game, eliminating a target audience ultimately could
damage their potential attendance numbers. I think it’s something worth noted.
Upon diving deeper into the events held by the Raptors, I discovered a finding which
helps us understand more why attendance was so high during the Idaho Falls series. On
Saturday, the second day of the double-headers, the Raptors held a special giveaway. At first, I
thought I misread, but it turned out to be true. The Ogden Raptors gave out a car to a fan in
attendance. This explains profoundly why attendance was boosted. I would assume that the car
giveaway created a massive buzz around the town. As a resident, who wouldn’t spend a few
dollars to have a chance to win a free car? At this point, I believe we have enough evidence to
explain the attendance numbers.
 VII. Tree Diagram Analysis
To finish my project, I decided to create a tree diagram comparing attendance to win
percentage and giveaways in RStudio. The code I used is below:

This was the output. The diagram compares

attendance to when the Raptors had above and
below a .739 Win Percentage(W%). As you can
see, there is a monstrous change with attendance
when the team is playing well vs. when not. The
3rd quartile of average attendance when the team
has less than or equal to a .739 W% is less than
the 1st quartile of when the Raptors W% is greater
than .739. The median for each branch of the tree
is around 3,400 when <= .739 W% and 4,300
when > .739 W%. Taking both of those
observations into consideration, it would make
sense for one to say, “The Raptors draw a much
higher crowd when they are playing well.”
Although this may be true, there is much more
then what this Tree Diagram shows. Allow me to
explain:
What the tree diagram fails to show are the outside factors that could increase or
decrease attendance. For example, if there happened to be poor weather during more games
when the team was performing below the W%, then it is fair to say the weather could have also
played a role in lower attendance numbers. To provide more evidence, the first two weeks of the
season was when the Raptors had most of their games played with a W% below .74. During
these 14 days, the coldest temperatures were recorded in the season. Was it the team playing
“poorly” that lowered attendance, or was it the colder weather? It could be a combination of
both. However, the reason I believe lower attendance correlates stronger with weather is because
of what we are defining as playing “poor.” This Tree diagram influences the interpreter to think a
W% below .740 is poor, which would result in having lesser attendance. For context, having a
win percentage of .700 or 70% means the team could theoretically have a record of 50 wins and
22 losses. By no means does that define a team as playing bad is considered a subpar record from
the model, resulting in lower attendance. It is blatantly unrealistic to expect a team to maintain a
.740 W%. The Raptors happened to have a phenomenal season during 2019.
It also should be noted that many other outside factors could affect attendance that is not
represented in the dataset. One example could be events occurring within the city of Ogden. If,
for example, there is a concert going on in the town the same night of a game, the Raptors
personnel should expect a lower than average attendance regardless of what their teams Win
Percentage is.
VIII. Conclusion
After all my findings, these are the conclusions I have made:
 The Ogden Raptors and Orem Owls should push a rivalry between the teams to boost
attendance
 The boost in attendance for the Idaho Falls series was most likely due to the car giveaway
during one of the days and the games being two double-headers on the most popular days
of the week.
 According to regression results, fans care much more about the day the game is played,
not necessarily the promotion being held or the opponent they are playing. A more
extensive data set could change these results.
 For more confident analysis, we must look at attendance and weather data over multiple
seasons.
 We can conclude off last year’s attendance data that the better the team is performing, the
more likely you are to have higher attendance. However, using .739 as a baseline Win
Percentage to compare the likeliness of high vs. low attendance wouldn’t be fair, because
my results only conclude over last season’s data, which happened to be a hugely
successful season. Looking at attendance results over multiple seasons may give us a
more accurate baseline Win Percentage. Also, other factors can change attendance to
consider, including promotions, weather, prospects being added or stars on rehab, events
occurring within the city, and more.
 Look for more opportunities within the town to use as promotional events. For example,
an event focused on celebrities from Ogden like UFC fighter Court McGee and former
Laker Byron Scott would draw interest from locals.

Spending my semester researching the Ogden Raptors has been a great experience. I have
learned so many tools to advance my knowledge in data analysis during this project. In the
future, I hope to continue to do projects like this and be able to help teams succeed either on the
field with players or off the field for the business side of the organization.