If there’s an aspect of attendance watching that is vexing for media (and fans, alike), it’s how announced attendance is calculated. Most know that when the number is announced at the ballpark, your eyeballs often counter, “That’s not what I see. It’s far less.”

Such is landscape in professional sports where paid attendance – the number of tickets sold – is the new number announced, not the number of turnstile clicks.

But, there’s more.

An example is last night’s Tigers-Red Sox game at Fenway Park. Announced attendance was 37,311, and yet the postgame notes read this: 653rd consecutive sellout since May 15, 2003

When we looked at our numbers, it didn’t jibe.

Night attendance at Fenway is 37,495. How is that a sellout? According to the Red Sox, announced attendance for the boxscore does not include comps. By those standards, the Red Sox deemed the game a sellout.

That got us wondering (and we can’t answer it now): Just how often is this the case? Whether the info will be made available, we plan on setting out contacting each of the 30 clubs to see if this policy holds true throughout the league.

Back to Weds’ attendance...

The Red Sox didn’t get a rainout, but it was close. Chalk up another rain delay, this one 26 minutes (The delay began at 9:31 in the top of the 8th inning and the game resumed at 9:57).

It’s a good thing that Red Sox and Phillies posted numbers at 100% (or for the Phillies, 102%) of capacity. Ballparks were just 52% full by average. The Blue Jays certainly didn’t help that number drawing just 14,415 with the visiting Rays, or 29 percent of Rogers Centre’s 49,539 capacity.

Here’s the rest of Weds’ attendance figures:

Sell-Thru = Percentage of capacity

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Welcome to the 2011 Business of Sports Network Autism Challenge

David Simmons is a graduate of the University of Central Florida who worked in the front office of the Los Angeles Dodgers over 4 seasons and has a decade of ticketing experience.. He serves as CFO for Players For The Planet and currently resides in Baltimore. You can follow David on Twitter @davidesimmons

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written by natteringnabob, May 20, 2011

Looking forward to the inquiries about "sellouts"; teams seem to measure them (or fib about them) differently.

Also, 50% capacity for the Dodgers with their WS-winning rivals in town is kind of amazing. Not in a good way.

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