Sunday afternoon’s game against the San Diego Padres was the final home game of the 2025 season for the Chicago White Sox.
The South Siders could not finish off their late comeback attempt, and dropped their final home game 3-2. The White Sox will now finish out the 2025 regular season with a three-game series against the New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium and a three-game series against the Washington Nationals at Nationals Park.
With every home game in the rearview mirror, we now have a final tally for White Sox ticket sales and attendance this season. According Scott Merkin of MLB.com, 24,205 people purchased tickets for Sunday’s White Sox game. That brings the season attendance total to 1,445,750.
That means the White Sox sold an average of 17,848 tickets per home game. That’s less than half of the tickets available in every game. Rate Field has a capacity of 40,615.
1,445,750 tickets sold is an increase of 65,000 from the attendance in 2024 (1,380,733) when the Sox set the record from the most losses in a single season. Outside of 2024, it is the lowest total attendance for the White Sox in the last 25 years, excluding the 2020 COVID season.
If we are to disqualify the Athletics and Tampa Bay Rays, who both currently play in a minor league stadium, only one team in baseball had worse attendance than the White Sox in 2025 - the Miami Marlins. It's not hard to figure out why.
White Sox fans are loyal, but as long as the team is a bottom of the barrel franchise and losing 100 games every season, the attendance numbers are not going to be great. Winning brings the crowd. Fun baseball brings a crowd. The Savannah Bananas proved that earlier this year, but unfortunately, that's something that Jerry Reinsdorf doesn't understand.
Low attendance gives Jerry Reinsdorf an excuse
Sox fans should be preparing themselves now for what's coming during the offseason. When Chicago is fairly uninvolved in the free agent market and points to "growing young talent they already have in the organization," nobody should be surprised.
Jerry Reinsdorf is one of the cheapest owners in sports, and rather than spend money to make the team competitive and get butts in seats, Reinsdorf will undoubtedly point to the low attendance numbers as the reason why he can't sign free agents. He will blame the fans like he always does.
Apparently forcing White Sox fans to pay $20 per month to watch their favorite team on TV with a CHSN subscription wasn't cruel enough.
It's a lose-lose situation. Sox fans shouldn't be selling out home games and lining Jerry's pockets when he doesn't put the money back into the team. But if the fans don't go, Reinsdorf only gets another way to justify his cheap habits.