PROVIDENCE – The Pawtucket Red Sox’s 2017 attendance totaled 409,960, 2,863 more attendees than 2016, according to the Pawsox 2018 Media Guide.
The increase reverses a three-year attendance decline from 559,933 in 2013. The attendance increase came in a season with 64 home games, compared with 67 the year prior and 71 the year before that. The PawSox also did not make the playoffs in 2017. The team last made the playoffs in 2014, when it lost in the championship to the Omaha Storm Chasers, the Kansas City Royals’ AAA affiliate.
The report also noted than in 2017, there were 75 players in Major League Baseball that played for the PawSox at some point in their career, including 37 Boston Red Sox players.
At a Northern Rhode Island Chamber of Commerce breakfast last week, R.I. House Speaker Nicholas A. Mattiello said that he believes the team should remain in Rhode Island and said that the legislature is working on a new “framework” to remove any risk for taxpayers in the PawSox’s plan to build a new stadium at Slater Mill.
The state Senate has supported a proposal that involved the issuance of bonds that both the state and the city would back, to the tune of $23 million and $15 million, respectively. In addition, the team would contribute $12 million in cash and pay back $33 million in bonds.
Chris Bergenheim is the PBN web editor.
