Nationals No-Shows Could Cost D.C. in Taxes

The unpredictable aspect of how many fans use their tickets might make Wall Street leery of giving the city a good rate on bonds that are financed by tax revenue from the stadium sales, said Natwar M. Gandhi, the District's chief financial officer. He used this argument when he recommended that the city accept a private financing plan from Deutsche Bank. No decision has been made.

The practice of announcing the paid attendance instead of the turnstile count is common across the major professional leagues, in part because teams want to reflect the largest crowds possible to help marketing. Also, the head count used to be harder to tabulate. The D.C. Sports & Entertainment Commission uses a ticket-scanning system developed by Ticketmaster to keep track of the daily crowd as fans enter RFK's turnstiles. An electronic scanner reads a bar code on each ticket.

Nationals players have said repeatedly that they have been impressed by the size and passion of game-day crowds, which dwarf the number of fans who showed up in Montreal, where the team played last year.

But no-shows were notable even as the Nationals moved into first place during a 10-game winning streak early this month. With each game at RFK, the Nationals sold an average of 32,014 tickets, but the number of fans in the stadium averaged 23,585.

For a thrilling, 11th-inning victory over the Florida Marlins on June 3, the team announced a paid attendance of 29,439 on a night that was cloudy and had the potential for rain. The actual crowd was 16,723.

Vincent Morris, spokesman for Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D), said city officials believe that the Nationals' attendance will improve as fans become more familiar with the team and the routine of going to games.

"The consensus is that the numbers will go up," Morris said. "People are still being introduced to the Nationals."

About 22,000 people or companies purchased season ticket plans, a number that pleased Nationals officials. But Colin Mills, president of a Nationals fan club, said he believes that corporations, not rabid baseball fans, bought a large share of season tickets and often fail to use the tickets -- including those for the prime seats close to the field.

"We call them 'Johnny Jaguar,' the typical K Street lobbyists who buy all the tickets and don't show for the game," Mills said. "Based on the breathless preseason hyperbole that the team would sell out every night, that's not happening."

Allen R. Sanderson, who teaches sports business at the University of Chicago, said many fans and companies probably bought tickets before the season began, figuring the team would be bad because the Expos were bad.

These ticket buyers did not necessarily want to go to games at 44-year-old RFK, Sanderson said, but wanted to "be at the head of the queue for a new stadium and when the team gets better."

Andrew Zimbalist, a professor of economics at Smith College in Massachusetts who has written about sports business, said the Nationals also have been hurt by the lawsuit between Comcast and Baltimore Orioles owner Peter G. Angelos, which has kept many games off television.

"You need to have television coverage to get people interested in the team," Zimbalist said. "The way people do it is watch it on TV, get excited about the team and say, 'I want to see it in person.' "

Staff writer Barry Svrluga contributed to this report.