MN Twins Owners Made Their Own Attendance Bed, and Now…

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Target Field, Minnesota Twins
Credit: Jesse Johnson-Imagn Images

Over the weekend, the Minnesota Twins played their final home game at Target Field. Royce Lewis came off the bench and blasted a dinger to ensure they’d leave the stadium with at least one victory in four attempts.

Unfortunately, you can’t put lipstick on an ugly 67-89 regular season record, let alone the bleak future outlook, now that the Pohlads plan to retain majority control of the organization.

Afterall, it was the Pohlads who started this MN Twins spiral two years ago when they decided to “right-size” the payroll, immediately following the deepest playoff run in decades. As a result, fans have gone from frustrated to apathetic.

Worst Twins attendance since team was offered for contraction

And when fans quit caring, 40,000 seat stadiums start to go empty, a fact of pro sports life that was on full display in downtown Minneapolis over the summer, where attendance tanked to levels we have never seen during the Target Field era.

1,768,728 — That’s the final tally for the Minnesota Twins attendance this season — well short of 2024’s disappointing number of 1,951,616, and well short of the 2 million that former president Dave St. Peter projected last offseason, per Aaron Gleeman (The Athletic).

In fact, it’s been since 2000 — when the Twins lost 93 games and managed just 1,000,760 fans at the Metrodome — that fewer fans have showed up to watch the home-nine over the course of a full summer. After that ugly 2000 season, Carl Pohlad offered the franchise up for contraction, in exchange for $250 million.

Too bad the current iteration of Pohlad ownership isn’t that open to offloading their MLB asset. But hell, now that the new minority investors have helped them clear more than $400 million in debt off the books, fans can at least be hopeful for more spending on talent this offseason, right?

Not only would that make the team better, but it would help excite fans during peak season ticket sale season. Oh and let’s not forget that selling Twins.TV subscriptions is now just as important as selling Target Field tickets. Without fan interest, it is incredibly difficult to make money as an MLB owner these days.

But let’s be real, the Pohlads are in this spot because they think in terms of short-term cents, not long-term sense. Any self proclaimed high school economist could have told them that cutting corners on talent would likely lead to more losses, less fan interest and ultimately less revenue.

Attendance problem is a Pohlad problem, and they’ll only make it worse.

The Pohlads didn’t care about any of that logic, though. They happily made their bed and now, if history tells us anything, they will cry in it and point fingers in all the wrong places with zero awareness of their own crimes.

So what is the owners’ offseason plan? In all likelihood, they’ll cut more, because that’s all this family knows when times are tough. That’s what Gleeman — who’s been watching this Pohlad car wreck closer than just about anyone in Twins Territory for the last two decades — fully expects, anyway.

And here’s the part that should have Twins officials really worried for what next year holds: For every team every year, the vast majority of tickets are sold before the season starts. Those tickets can’t be “unsold” no matter how badly a team plays or how turned off a fan base gets.

Because of that, MLB attendance is often referred to as a lagging indicator of fan interest. Whether a team has an amazing season or a terrible season, the full impact on overall attendance isn’t felt until the following year, when it’s again time to sell the vast majority of tickets in advance.

In other words: As bad as the Twins’ attendance was this season, and as far as it plunged following the roster-gutting trade deadline, the full weight of a horrendous 2025 and righteous fan frustration will be felt in 2026. Retaining existing season ticket holders will be difficult. Adding new ones? Good luck.

Aaron Gleeman – The Athletic

Even if the 2026 Minnesota Twins were to stumble into success, any rise in attendance would be delayed, just like 2025’s failures will be felt more next season than they were this summer. That reality will leave Twins executives and those in the PR department scrambling even further, but not in the right ways.

It was the Pohlads who got this ball rolling, after the 2023 season, and I fully expect them to make it worse until they are gone. Hell, the first move they made as they look toward the offseason, was to axe three-quarters of their pro scouting department.

So anyone hoping for more than nothing from the Twins this offseason will be setting expectations exponentially too high. In other words, their attendance problem is only going to get worse as long as there’s a Pohlad making decisions at the top.

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