When the Philadelphia Phillies moved most of their spring and fall weeknight home games from 7:05 p.m. to 6:45 p.m. in 2022, the change seemed modest. But inside Citizens Bank Park, it quickly became something more: a fan-experience decision that helped parents keep kids in the seats through the final out and still get home at a reasonable hour.
Philadelphia was not alone. Across Major League Baseball, the weeknight clock has been moving earlier.
Games starting before 7 p.m. local time grew from 41.7% of weekday starts in 2021 to 65.8% in 2024, as clubs increasingly treat first pitch as an attendance and fan-experience lever. Those earlier starts dipped to 63.4% last year, driven largely by the Tampa Bay Rays’ temporary move to Steinbrenner Field, where most weekday games started later to account for Florida summer heat and rain.
Through May 28 this season, 76% of weekday games had started before 7 p.m., though that figure is expected to settle lower as clubs move into later summer start times.
The reasons behind the shift vary by market. For some clubs, earlier first pitches have become a family-friendly strategy designed to keep parents and children in the ballpark longer on school nights. For others, start times are influenced by factors such as weather, traffic patterns, television considerations, premium hospitality and operational logistics.
What was once largely a scheduling convention has become another business decision teams are actively evaluating.
Fan feedback factors
In Philadelphia, the calculation was straightforward: Make it easier for fans to attend a weeknight game and still get home at a reasonable hour.
The Phillies in 2022 moved all Monday-Thursday home games in April, May and September from 7:05 p.m. to 6:45 p.m. The following season, they shifted to a 6:40 p.m. first pitch for the majority of weekday matchups. And while there have been some minor tweaks since, that is largely the schedule structure they utilize today.
“When we moved our start time to 6:40 p.m., I’ve never had more positive feedback on anything from our season-ticket holders,” John Weber, the Phillies’ senior vice president of ticket operations and a 25-year club executive, told Sports Business Journal. “I couldn’t imagine playing a game at 7:05 right now.”
The combination of pace-of-play rule changes, which were instituted before 2023, and earlier start times has proved successful at the box office. In 2024, with nine-inning games averaging 2 hours, 36 minutes, the league saw a 13% increase in weekday attendance from two years prior.
Seattle Mariners Chairman and CEO John Stanton, who formerly led MLB’s Competition Committee, recalled the significance of essentially gaining an hour each day. It was enough to mitigate any risk that came with the pitch clock, as shorter games provide less time to sell concessions.
“The data we had at the time said 15 teams’ concessions had been up and 15 teams’ concessions had been down, so on a net basis it was less than a percentage point change,” Stanton said. “And I would’ve changed it even if it had cost us money in the short term, because it’s good in the long term. We must make the game responsive to the interest of our fans over a long period of time, and we need to expand our fan base and get younger and more diverse.”
The league is seeking its fourth straight year of drawing more than 70 million fans. Meanwhile, Philadelphia is seeking its fourth straight year of drawing more than 3 million fans.
“We’re like everybody else,” Weber said. “You see trends that appear to be successful, and you talk to your counterparts. When you ask them about their feedback and they say it’s been positive, well, then you start looking at it. And then you’ve got to talk to baseball operations, other business units, television, radio, all that, to make sure everybody’s on board.
“For some people, it’s a little more difficult getting here [to the South Philadelphia Sports Complex] at that time. But most people, just knowing they’d be home earlier, it really has just made it more fan-friendly for everybody. If you have a 45-minute drive or whatnot, you’re home by 10 p.m.”
How early is too early?
Not including the Chicago Cubs, the typical yearly leaders in games beginning before 6:30 p.m. local time include the Cleveland Guardians, Colorado Rockies, Detroit Tigers, St. Louis Cardinals, Chicago White Sox and Milwaukee Brewers.
One of the earliest lessons for clubs was that there is no universal start time. The optimal first pitch varies by market, climate and fan base.
The Guardians began testing 6:10 p.m. weekday starts in 2015 to guard against potential weather conflicts in April and May, and have continued to slot them at Progressive Field ever since. Curtis Danburg, Cleveland’s vice president of communications and community impact, said the time has remained a favorite in fan surveys because of convenience, especially early in the season and September. The Guardians shifted to 6:40 p.m. for summer weekdays.
“It’s still obviously difficult to draw during the week, but it gives us the best chance for success, especially when we have good weather and a good opponent,” Danburg said.
But teams also learned that moving earlier doesn’t necessarily mean moving as early as possible. Fan feedback suggested the issue was finding the right balance between getting fans home sooner and allowing them enough time to get to the ballpark after work.
The White Sox solicited feedback before arriving at an optimal pre-7 p.m. first pitch. Unlike the Guardians, the 6:10 p.m. weekday start time did not grade out well when the White Sox polled season-ticket holders and select individual fans, said Brooks Boyer, executive vice president and chief revenue and marketing officer. The clear winner was 6:40 p.m., significantly ahead of 7:10 p.m.
“Part of that is the traffic that we have in Chicago, people just didn’t want to fight that,” Boyer said.
The balancing act
Earlier starts are not without tradeoffs. Clubs must balance fan convenience against television audiences, premium hospitality demand, commuter traffic and baseball operations concerns.
“If you’re a team in the north, your night games are better for TV ratings, suite rentals and other corporate-type events, but sometimes it makes more sense to play during the day because you want to have a greater window for teams to play,” Boyer said.
It was two decades ago that the White Sox were able to secure a three-year, $500,000-a-year sponsorship deal with 7-Eleven that included Chicago starting all weekday home games at 7:11 p.m.
“We proposed it to them and they loved the idea,” Boyer said. “Obviously, there was a ton of attention around it. And it worked. I remember one of their execs saying, ‘We got more publicity right off the bat than we’re paying you the entire time.’ Maybe we undersold it. It was the perfect brand.”
To Boyer’s knowledge, no one has been able to pull it off since.
Across town, since 2021 the Cubs have typically been starting weekdays at 6:40 p.m. in April, May and September, and 7:05 p.m. during the summer. Wrigley Field famously didn’t have lights until 1988, and a city ordinance limits the number of night games the Cubs can play.
Cubs Executive Vice President and Chief Operations Officer David Cromwell said the club has offered a school-night special since moving some games earlier, bundling a ticket with a hot dog and non-alcoholic beverage.
“It’s more family-friendly, more kid-friendly the earlier start time during that school-year period, and our fans have been really positively responsive to that,” Cromwell said.
Meanwhile, getaway games can be a delicate balancing act, with teams considering ticket sales as well as being mindful of their players’ travel plans and their opponent’s. There are also collective-bargaining agreement considerations at play.
The Phillies, for instance, will play a rare September day game against the Houston Astros on Sept. 10 at 1:05 p.m.
“I normally wouldn’t make that a day game with school back in session, but because we’re traveling and Houston is traveling, it was important to make that a day game, and we’ll figure out ways to sell it,” Weber said. “You’re always trying to be a good partner to other teams. You try your best. Sometimes, you’ve got to tell somebody, ‘Hey, I’ve already got two other day games this month and I can’t have a third.’”
Researcher Josh Broughton contributed to this story.
