{"id":285665,"date":"2026-09-14T10:56:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-14T10:56:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/285665\/"},"modified":"2026-09-14T10:56:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T10:56:09","slug":"minor-league-markets-5-reading-pa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/285665\/","title":{"rendered":"Minor League Markets: 5. Reading, Pa."},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph sections-events-and-attractions \"> \u25a0 TEAMS (FIRST SEASON): Class AA Reading Fightin Phils (1963), ECHL Reading Royals (2001)<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph sections-events-and-attractions \">\u25a0 VENUES (YEAR OPENED): FirstEnergy Stadium (1951), Santander Arena (2001)<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph sections-events-and-attractions \">Only seven markets have a higher tenure score than Reading, and it was one of the top markets when attendance during the measurement period (just over 5 million) was indexed against its population (440,000) and per-capita income ($65,700). Overall, the teams filled 67% of their total available seats, a jump of 10 percentage points over our 2019 study.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph sections-events-and-attractions \">The Fightin Phils are one of minor league baseball\u2019s most consistent draws, and the team is on pace to average more than 5,900 fans this season, matching its average of the 721 games played over the past decade.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph sections-events-and-attractions \">Both of the market\u2019s clubs are affiliates of a major league team in Philadelphia, located 90 minutes to the southeast: the Phillies since 1967 (the longest such relationship in baseball) and the Flyers since 2014.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph sections-events-and-attractions \">The market\u2019s ranking was boosted by a $45 million ballpark renovation in 2024 and a $3 million upgrade that wrapped up at the arena in 2023.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph sections-events-and-attractions \">This is the fourth time Reading has been ranked in the top 10. However, for the market to retain its high ranking, the Royals will need to reverse their three consecutive year-over-year declines in attendance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u25a0 TEAMS (FIRST SEASON): Class AA Reading Fightin Phils (1963), ECHL Reading Royals (2001) \u25a0 VENUES (YEAR OPENED):&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":285666,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[4662,86838,33053,8740,33052,128,130,129],"class_list":["post-285665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-baseball","tag-data-and-insights","tag-in-depth","tag-phillies","tag-print","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/285666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}