Cardinals Saw Historic Attendance Drop for 2025 MLB Season, Owner Promises Changes

St. Louis Cardinals CEO Bill DeWitt Jr. said Wednesday his club has received the "message" fans sent when attendance at Busch Stadium dropped by more than half a million fans in 2025.

"We've all seen it. The numbers are down, and it's something that we're not happy about," DeWitt said Thursday while introducing new president of baseball operations Chaim Bloom. "To the extent that that's a message, the message has been received."

The Cardinals saw an attendance decrease of 628,108 fans last season, marking an MLB-high decline of 4,194 fewer fans per game, per Forbes' Maury Brown.

The decrease was larger than both the Tampa Bay Rays and the Athletics, who moved to minor league parks for the 2025 season.

This marks the second straight season in which the Cardinals have led MLB in year-over-year attendance decline, per Brown. St. Louis recorded a 362,976 drop in attendance, another MLB high, between 2023 and 2024.

The Cardinals recorded a total attendance of 2.25 million fans in 2025, good for 19th in MLB and marking a 21.8 percent decline from last season.

That is a higher percentage decline than other struggling teams including the A's, which welcomed 768,464 fans to the Triple-A Sutter Health Park in a 16.7 percent attendance decline from the club's final season at Oakland Coliseum, per Brown.

Proportionally, the Rays led the MLB with a 41.2 attendance drop after moving to their own minor-league stadium following hurricane damage to Tropicana Field. That still constituted a loss of just over 550,000 fans, leaving the Cardinals in first place in terms of total lost audience.

DeWitt told reporters Wednesday he believed solving the Cardinals' attendance issues could involve more than just getting the club competitive again after three years without a postseason appearance.

One plan DeWitt mentioned was the Cardinals' Friday Night Live program, an initiative introduced ahead of the 2025 season in which DJs and live bands played on the terrace outside Busch Stadium starting when gates opened for Friday home games.

"I think it was a nice first step this year, to create a little bit of a different feel on a Friday versus a Sunday, and there will be more of that to come," DeWitt said.

DeWitt also said the Cardinals plan to consider changes to ticket and concession pricing ahead of the 2026 season.

"We've listened to our fans and they want values. Prices for tickets, concession and parking is something that they've expressed issue with," DeWitt said.

Fans have also expressed concern about safety in the area around the stadium, DeWitt said.

The Cardinals CEO added he hopes that will change once downtown St. Louis adds "a permanent layer" of security thanks to new legislation passed in July classifying the area as an entertainment district.

Chad Mira of St. Louis' Fox 2 News reported this legislation will allow downtown St. Louis to use state funding to promote tourism, and will also authorize the district "to hire and train its own public safety personnel to enforce the laws and curfews."

It's been just two years since the Cardinals finished the 2023 season having welcomed 3.2 million fans to Busch Stadium, marking an average attendance of 40,000 that ranked fourth only to the Los Angeles Dodgers, New York Yankees and San Diego Padres for fourth in MLB.

DeWitt and Bloom will hope changes to the game-day experience, as well as fielding a hopefully more competitive team, could help draw fans back to downtown St. Louis in 2026.