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The story
On October 9, NPB (Nippon Professional Baseball) announced that combined attendance across the Central and Pacific Leagues for 2026 reached 27,177,247, a new all-time record for the third year in a row. Per-game averages came to 34,088 for the Central League and 29,262 for the Pacific League. On 5ch, the reaction focused less on the record itself than on long-running doubts about how these attendance numbers are actually counted — “is that really how many people showed up?” Year-on-year, only the Chunichi Dragons saw an increase, while the Hanshin Tigers, DeNA, and the Hiroshima Carp all declined — and posters repeatedly noted that Hiroshima’s modest drop didn’t match how empty the stands actually looked in photos. The thread also pulled in comparisons with how the J.League and MLB tally their own numbers, reviving the old baseball-vs-soccer argument over whose attendance figures are closer to the truth.
[NPB] Central/Pacific League attendance this season: 27,177,247 — a record high for the 3rd straight year
Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) announced on the 9th the attendance figures for both the Central and Pacific Leagues this season.
This season’s attendance came to 27,177,247, a new record high for the third consecutive year.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
What even is this???
861 Anonymous sage (posted without bumping the thread) 2026/10/09 (Fri) 17:16:05.70 ID:GNaYW8hH0
The only team whose per-game average rose year-on-year was Chunichi, up 2.6%. Hanshin, who won back-to-back pennants, was down 0.2%; DeNA down 2.6%; Hiroshima down 5.1%.
https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/793c0b10ef061257378d91e8fb0f0286ce01f9d5
Both Hanshin and Yokohama (DeNA) dropped from last year.
Even with the padding, the Carp are still bottom of the Central League.
Attendance looked like that and Hiroshima only dropped 5.1%? Makes no sense lol
Reminds me of the Pacific League back in the Showa era (pre-1989, when it was infamous for empty stands).
Guess Japan really is a baseball country after all.
I mean, when it comes to Japanese athletes who actually make real money, it's still baseball players.
Japanese soccer players go overseas too, but
they still haven't gotten real recognition on the world stage.
https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/793c0b10ef061257378d91e8fb0f0286ce01f9d5
Both Hanshin and Yokohama (DeNA) dropped from last year.
Even with the padding, the Carp are still bottom of the Central League.
Except for games that got rained out and rescheduled, every Hanshin game sells out instantly before the season even starts, so you can't do the whole "they look like they'll win it this year, guess I'll go watch" thing.
Both the rescheduled games and the rained-out games were already sold out anyway, so literally every home game was a sellout.
So really it just means slightly more people than last year bought tickets, didn't show up, and let the seat go to waste.
And this is supposedly 20,000 people.
'Baseball math' (slang for NPB's inflated attendance counting) is garbage as usual.
Even the diehard fans ('yakibuta' — a mocking slang term for baseball fanboys) who were watching in person were baffled.
This one's also announced as 20,000.
Come on, that's a stretch lol
Looks about like old Kawasaki Stadium (notorious back in the day for near-empty crowds).
Reminds me of the Pacific League in the Showa era.
You could always hear some drunk old guy heckling, loud and clear.
For some reason the crowds always shrink once it's the Japan Series.
The announced attendance for the Japan Series ends up lower than for a regular pennant-race game.
I actually looked up the announced attendance for the Climax Series (CS, NPB's playoff round) versus the Japan Series since the pandemic started.
Every single team that played in both had higher CS attendance than Japan Series attendance lol.
Even Hanshin drew fewer fans at the Japan Series lol.
Yokohama (DeNA) was the only one where the Japan Series was close to a sellout,
but they'd finished 3rd and made the CS that way, so they had no home games there to compare against.
Wonder why.
Is the Carp's empty stadium because of Sanfrecce (Hiroshima's J.League club)?
Or because of 'zombie cigarettes'?
Maybe it's both.
Central League >>> MLB
Thanks to the padding, we beat MLB.
MLB pads its numbers even more shamelessly.
https://x.com/Pads1818/status/2091665980355141663
It's really turned things around.
40 years ago, Seibu was basically the only team that drew a crowd.
Pacific League TV (the PL's streaming service) is a lifesaver.
Apparently there was a period when the stands were so empty, people in the crowd would do nagashi-somen (the flowing-noodle game) instead of watching the baseball.
Though maybe those were just people killing time for free lol.
but Koshien (Hanshin's home stadium) crowds are making up for it?
The Giants and the Dragons are basically sold out too.
The BayStars and the Swallows draw pretty well too.
Pro baseball counts fans who never even showed up lol.
Who cares if they didn't show up, as long as the advance tickets sold?
'Ball-kickers' (mocking slang for soccer fans) don't even buy advance tickets lol.
Which is exactly why the 'Tax League' has garbage-low revenue per fan and barely pays its stadium usage fees.
The J.League never runs a deficit because of tax subsidies,
so they can just hand out free tickets like crazy.
Wow, impressive, J.League.
Not a single club in the red.
That's way healthier management than pro baseball.
when a team like Hiroshima actually ends up with empty seats, they can't even respond to it lol.
They have no idea which demographic dropped off, or by how much lol.
Meanwhile the J.League tracks exactly who shows up, even on free tickets lol.
Since the pandemic, J.League attendance and revenue have both been climbing steadily.
Their marketing is genuinely excellent.
People say the J.League's market size will overtake pro baseball's before long.
Huh?
Consadole Sapporo's parent company had to bail them out with 1.5 billion yen, you know.
Apparently the J.League never runs a deficit thanks to tax money lol.
Background and Key Points of This Debate
It has long been known that NPB’s attendance figures aren’t an actual gate headcount, but rather a tally announced by the host team that includes advance and complimentary tickets — so the announced numbers can easily diverge from how full the stands actually look. This structural quirk is the root of the recurring “padding” controversy, and it’s exactly what drove this thread’s complaints that Hiroshima’s reported 5.1% decline didn’t match the sparse crowds visible in the posted photos. The J.League, by contrast, is seen by some as using a count closer to actual gate entries, and the rivalry over whose tallying method is more honest — baseball fans versus soccer fans — is a familiar fault line that keeps resurfacing in threads like this one. One point readers can easily get wrong is that a rise or fall in attendance doesn’t directly reflect a team’s financial health: for a team like Hanshin, where advance tickets sell out before the season even starts, a drop in announced attendance can simply mean more no-shows among people who’d already bought tickets — a quirk of how ticket sales themselves work. The thread’s real focus wasn’t the “record high” headline itself, but the reliability of the announced figures and whether comparisons between teams and leagues built on those figures actually hold up.
*This article is compiled as an excerpt and summary of the 5ch (Geinou/Sports Breaking News+) thread “[Baseball] NPB: Central/Pacific League attendance this season is 27,177,247 — record high for 3rd straight year… Per-game average: Central League 34,088, Pacific League 29,262.”
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