Homestand 5: vs. Arizona Diamondbacks & New York Mets
HS5 delivered the strongest headline score in the comparison set, with 8.76 / 10 overall satisfaction and a lower low-rating share at 16.77%. But the cleaner operating read is narrower than the top line: audience mix explains a meaningful share of the gain, while the clearest weak-experience signals still concentrated in security and crowd flow, staff handling, and game presentation.
01Executive narrative
HS5 delivered the strongest headline score in the comparison set, but the most important conclusion is not simply that the fan experience improved. The top-line gain was real in the survey, yet the composition check shows that audience mix explains a meaningful share of that lift, so the cleanest operational read comes from the narrower pain points that still distinguished weak experiences from strong ones.
Those pain points were concentrated, not broad. Low ratings were materially less common than in HS-1, Season, and HS2025, but when fans did have a poor experience, the clearest negative separators were security and safety, staff handling, and — at a lower scale — game presentation. Together, those findings make HS5 read as a strong homestand with a shallower negative tail, but one that still exposed visible stress in crowd control, gate-side execution, and in-bowl presentation choices.
- The top line improved clearly, with the strongest Overall Numrat average and lower low-rating share than every benchmark period.
- Audience mix explains part of that gain, so the raw score overstates how much should be credited to operations alone.
- The clearest next-homestand actions are post-game crowd handling, gate-side staff direction, and audio / presentation tuning.
That hierarchy should guide the next homestand response. Leadership can credibly bank the improvement in the overall score, but operations should focus less on broad satisfaction maintenance and more on tightening the smaller set of issues that were elevated above normal: post-game crowd flow, gate and guest-services handling, and audio/presentation tuning.
02Topline outcomes
These measures establish the homestand-wide read before the report turns to mechanism. Read them in order: average score, the mix of high and low ratings, and return intent.
The main takeaway is that HS5 outperformed the prior homestand, the year-to-date baseline, and the comparable slot last season on headline satisfaction, while return intent stayed mixed relative to benchmarks. That pattern reads as a stronger overall fan experience with a shallower negative tail, but not a clean all-metric win.
Real change
Clear shift — strongest evidence this changed (p < 0.001)
Real change — strong evidence this changed (p < 0.01)
Likely real change — good evidence this changed (p < 0.05)
Within normal variation — the change is within what survey sampling alone could produce (p ≥ 0.05)
Directional only — the sample was too small to test reliably; read the direction, not the magnitude
Rating distribution across benchmark periods
Each bar shows the full Overall Numrat distribution split into Severe (0–4), Moderate (5–7), and High (8–10). HS5 improved on both the severe and moderate tail relative to HS-1 and HS2025, while staying close to the season baseline on severe share.
Metric: Overall Numrat distribution across HS, HS-1, Season, and HS2025. Denominators are all rated responses for each period.
Share of rated responses, n = 2,487 / 2,202 / 10,910 / 4,855 · Source: SIDECAR benchmark snapshot and tail severity table.
The top-line picture is strongest on satisfaction and weaker on loyalty. HS5 improved clearly on Overall Numrat average, high-share mix, and low-share mix versus every benchmark, but return intent remained mixed — within normal variation versus HS-1, below Season, and above HS2025.
03Where Low raters differ from High raters
Lift is the percentage-point gap between the theme mention rate among Low raters and High raters in this homestand. Higher lift means the theme is more closely tied to a Low rating.
Theme lift among Low raters — HS5
Lift is computed as the share of Low raters mentioning a theme minus the share of High raters mentioning it. Higher values indicate a stronger link to dissatisfaction.
Metric: theme lift among Low vs High raters in the current homestand, with risk ratio shown beside each bar.
Share of Low raters (n = 417) minus share of High raters (n = 2,070) · Source: SIDECAR theme signals table.
This exhibit matters because it separates broad mention volume from actual diagnostic power. Security & safety was the clearest weak-experience separator in HS5, reaching 40.53% of low raters versus 18.89% of high raters for a 21.64 point lift. Staff service followed at 11.18 points, while game presentation was smaller in lift but still notable because its overall salience moved above normal.
The ranking also clarifies why the report does not simply follow the largest raw themes. Venue satisfaction and concessions were more common overall, but their HS5 pattern was less diagnostic of dissatisfaction than security and staff handling were. That is why the next section centers on security, staff, and presentation rather than treating every broad complaint area as equally causal.
04Top drivers and what's spiking
The report focuses on the themes that do the most explanatory work in the homestand’s weak experiences. Each one is presented as a short argument: what changed, why it matters, what specific mechanism inside the theme appears to be responsible, and what that implies for the next homestand.
Taken together, these findings point to a narrower operating story than the top-line score implies. HS5 was broadly stronger, but the bad experiences that remained were still concentrated in crowd control, gate-side execution, and presentation calibration.
Theme salience — HS vs Season baseline
This compares how often each theme surfaced among all respondents in this homestand versus the year-to-date baseline.
Metric: theme prevalence among all respondents in HS versus Season. Rightward movement indicates the theme was more visible in this homestand.
Share of all respondents, n = 2,487 in HS and 10,910 in Season · Source: SIDECAR theme salience table.
Security & Safety
Signal. Security and crowd handling became the homestand’s clearest operational risk. Based on the security_mention and security_issue_aspect dimensions in security_safety, the theme appeared in 169 of 417 low-rated responses, or 40.53%, versus 18.89% of high-rated responses — a 21.64 point lift. At the survey-wide level, 560 surveyed fans mentioned the theme, or 22.52% of all HS respondents, up 3.63 points on Season.
Why it increased. The most actionable mechanism inside the theme was Exit Flow & Post-Game Crowd. That bucket reached 30 of 417 HS low raters, or 7.19%, up 4.46 points on HS-1 and 4.88 points on HS2025, both reading as a Clear shift. The available evidence points less to screening problems than to crowd handling, aisle blocking, and delayed response once the bowl or concourse became more chaotic.
How it connects to the rest of the homestand. This finding matters because it explains the downside of an otherwise strong homestand. The experience did not broadly collapse, but when visits went wrong, crowd flow and in-the-moment safety handling were disproportionately likely to define the bad outcome.
What is spiking among Low raters
Finding scale and confidence.
How many surveyed fans mentioned this? 560
How common was it in the survey? 22.52% of surveyed fans in this homestand
How unusual was it? +3.63 pp versus Season
Real change1
The source material is strong enough to support a crowd-control explanation, but narrower on exact root cause. The evidence substantiates aisle blocking, post-game crowd friction, and slow intervention more directly than any single staffing model failure.
Fan verbatims · Homestand window
Staff Service Interactions
Signal. Staff handling turned ordinary friction into worse experiences. Based on the staff_mention and staff_issue_aspect dimensions in staff_service_interactions, the theme surfaced in 155 of 417 low-rated responses, or 37.17%, versus 25.99% of high-rated responses. Across the full HS sample, 693 surveyed fans mentioned the theme, or 27.86% of respondents, up 3.79 points on Season.
Why it increased. The strongest mechanisms were Entry / Gate Staff and Staff Knowledge & Directions. Entry / Gate Staff reached 11.03% of HS low raters, up 4.72 points on Season and 5.35 points on HS2025, both Clear shifts. Staff Knowledge & Directions reached 5.52% of HS low raters, up 3.22 points on Season and 3.30 points on HS2025. The numbers point to gate-side direction, wayfinding, and issue ownership as the central problem rather than broad rudeness alone.
How it connects to the rest of the homestand. This theme helps explain why a strong overall homestand still produced visible weak experiences. When the environment became crowded or confusing, fans were more likely than normal to feel under-directed or insufficiently supported.
What is spiking among Low raters
Finding scale and confidence.
How many surveyed fans mentioned this? 693
How common was it in the survey? 27.86% of surveyed fans in this homestand
How unusual was it? +3.79 pp versus Season
Real change1
The source material clearly supports wayfinding and entry-handling stress, but it is more limited on distinguishing which staffing interventions would create the largest improvement. The strongest practical implication is more visible triage, direction, and faster issue ownership at the gate and in-bowl transition moments.
Fan verbatims · Homestand window
Game Presentation
Signal. Game presentation became more noticeable than usual, with audio the clearest watch item. Using the presentation_mention and presentation_issue_aspect dimensions in game_presentation, the theme appeared in 321 of 2487 HS responses, or 12.91%, up 5.64 points on HS-1, 3.34 points on Season, and 4.03 points on HS2025. That is the clearest overall salience jump among the promoted findings.
Why it increased. The mechanism underneath the salience increase is narrower than the theme movement itself. Music & Volume reached 28 of 417 HS low raters, or 6.71%, versus 3.76% in HS-1 — a 2.95 point increase that reads as a Likely real change. That is enough to justify a calibration response, but not enough to claim a broad single-cause spike across benchmarks.
How it connects to the rest of the homestand. This is what makes presentation different from security and staff. It is not the sharpest weak-experience separator, but it became more visible than normal in a way that can still erode an otherwise strong visit if left unaddressed.
Finding scale and confidence.
How many surveyed fans mentioned this? 321
How common was it in the survey? 12.91% of surveyed fans in this homestand
How unusual was it? +5.64 pp versus HS-1
Clear shift1
The source material is strongest on excessive noise, volume, and announcer clarity. It supports tuning the presentation mix before the next homestand, but not a wholesale redesign of game presentation.
Fan verbatims · Homestand window
Security became the clearest weak-experience mechanism by a wide margin
Security and safety earned the spotlight because it was both statistically meaningful and substantially larger than the other weak-experience separators in the report. Its low-versus-high lift reached 21.64 points, nearly double the next-ranked theme at 11.18 points for staff service interactions.
That gap matters because it shows HS5’s downside was not driven by several equally sized issues. One theme — security and crowd handling — stood out as the clearest operational mechanism inside the homestand’s remaining bad experiences. At the same time, the theme was not just narrowly diagnostic; it also rose above Season and HS2025 at the survey-wide salience level.
The bucket evidence narrows that signal further. Exit Flow & Post-Game Crowd reached 7.19% of low raters, up 4.46 points on HS-1 and 4.88 points on HS2025, both Clear shifts. The available quotes point to aisle blocking, crowd friction, delayed staff response, and disruptive behavior lingering too long before intervention.
This is what turns security from a background complaint area into the clearest homestand-level operating issue. HS5 was a strong homestand overall, but when experiences failed, crowd control and post-game handling were the most consistent way they failed.
Fan verbatims · Spotlight
05Spike buckets at a glance
The sharpest bucket-level pain points for the promoted themes clustered around crowd flow, gate-side execution, and presentation noise rather than broad breakdown across every touchpoint.
Bucket prevalence among Low raters — flagged themes
Each mini-chart shows the prevalence of the strongest bucket within a promoted theme among HS low raters, using only buckets surfaced in the SIDECAR.
Metric: issue-aspect prevalence among Low raters, n = 417 low-rated HS responses.
Source: SIDECAR spike-bucket analysis. No chart rendered for game presentation because no bucket met the full flagged-threshold rule.
| Theme | Bucket | HS mention count | HS % Low | Benchmark context | Confidence | Reader interpretation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Security & safety | Exit Flow & Post-Game Crowd | 30 / 417 | 7.19% | up from 2.74% in HS-1 and 2.31% in HS2025 | Clear shift | Emerging but real |
| Staff service interactions | Entry / Gate Staff | 46 / 417 | 11.03% | up from 6.31% in Season and 5.68% in HS2025 | Clear shift | Broad and worsening |
| Staff service interactions | Staff Knowledge & Directions | 23 / 417 | 5.52% | up from 2.30% in Season and 2.22% in HS2025 | Real change / Clear shift | Emerging but real |
| Game presentation | Music & Volume | 28 / 417 | 6.71% | up from 3.76% in HS-1 | Likely real change | Emerging but real |
The bucket view sharpens the operating diagnosis because it shows concentration, not just frequency. The lead pain points were not dispersed across unrelated touchpoints; they clustered around post-game crowd flow, gate-side staffing, staff direction, and presentation noise.
This section also shows an important difference in evidentiary strength. Security and staff have benchmarked bucket moves strong enough to support immediate action, while game presentation is narrower: its salience increase is clearly real, but the bucket-level mechanism is directional rather than fully flagged.
06Ops leadership quick-hits
Priority actions for the next homestand based on the issues that combined broad scale, benchmark elevation, and strong ties to dissatisfaction.
| Priority | Owner | Risk level |
|---|---|---|
| Tighten post-game crowd flow and exit management | Ballpark ops + security leadership | High |
| Improve gate-side staff direction and issue handling | Guest services + front-line staffing | High |
| Review in-bowl audio intensity and presentation pacing | Game presentation ops | Medium |
| Watch ticketing friction in pre-arrival journey | Ticketing / digital product | Medium |
| Separate audience-mix effects from pure ops wins in leadership readouts | Insights / leadership | Medium |
These priorities are strongest when read together rather than as separate fixes. The common thread is that HS5’s remaining downside was narrower than HS4’s, but still visible in moments where fans needed direction, crowd control, or cleaner sensory calibration.
Tighten post-game crowd flow and exit management ranks first because security carried the highest low-versus-high lift in the report at 21.64 points, and Exit Flow & Post-Game Crowd rose materially above HS-1 and HS2025. That is the clearest evidence that the strongest remaining risk sat in crowd handling rather than in broad ambient dissatisfaction.
Improve gate-side staff direction and issue handling follows directly from the staff evidence. Staff service reached 27.86% of all responses and 37.17% of low-rated responses, with Entry / Gate Staff and Staff Knowledge & Directions both elevated. The clearest fix is not generic friendliness training; it is more visible direction and better issue ownership in crowded transition moments.
Review in-bowl audio intensity and presentation pacing is a more targeted watch item. Game presentation salience moved above all three benchmarks, but the bucket-level evidence is narrower. That makes this a tune-and-monitor action rather than a structural redesign.
07Next-homestand action plan by journey moment
Each action maps directly to a surfaced mechanism from the analysis above rather than to a generic action list.
| Journey moment | Action | Why now |
|---|---|---|
| Arrival and gate entry | Add visible line management, directional staffing, and escalation coverage at the busiest gates | Staff and security friction concentrated around entry handling and in-the-moment guidance |
| In-bowl monitoring | Increase proactive response to aisle blocking, intoxication, and disruptive fan behavior | Security risk read is being driven by crowd handling more than by screening alone |
| Post-game exit | Review exit routing, concourse choke points, and post-game staffing coverage | Exit Flow & Post-Game Crowd is the sharpest bucket movement |
| Game presentation | Tune volume, reduce overuse of hype elements, and review announcer clarity | Presentation salience jumped even though the bucket read is narrower |
| Leadership reporting | Present raw and mix-adjusted HS5 top-line views together | Prevents over-crediting the score lift to operations alone |
The action plan should be read as a sequence, not a checklist. HS5’s strongest operational risks started at the front edge or in transition moments of the fan journey, so the highest-value improvements are the ones that remove confusion earliest and reduce the chance that friction compounds once fans are inside the ballpark.
The ordering also follows the evidence hierarchy in the report. Crowd flow and gate-side handling come first because they are the most clearly benchmark-elevated weak-experience mechanisms. Presentation tuning comes later because it is real but narrower. Leadership reporting remains in the plan because audience mix materially changes the interpretation of the top-line win.
AAppendix — sources, definitions, and notes
How to Read This Report
Use the results in three steps:
1. How many fans said it? We show both the number of surveyed fans who mentioned an issue and the share of surveyed fans who mentioned it.
2. Is it above normal? We compare this homestand with the prior homestand, the year-to-date baseline, and the comparable homestand last season to show whether an issue was more common than usual.
3. Is the change likely real? Statistical testing helps us determine whether a change in the survey sample likely reflects a real shift in the broader fan experience, rather than normal survey fluctuation.
Important interpretation note. A statistically significant increase does not mean most fans experienced the issue. It means the issue appears to have become more common in the underlying fan population, based on the survey sample.
How to interpret issue size:
- A high-count, significant issue is broad and clearly elevated.
- A low-count, significant issue is not widespread, but is a real emerging signal.
- A high-count, non-significant issue is common, but may be stable rather than worsening.
- A low-count, non-significant issue is smaller and should usually be monitored rather than escalated.
Why small counts can still matter
That is why the report shows both issue size and confidence:
- Issue size tells you how many surveyed fans mentioned the issue and what share of the survey sample they represent.
- Confidence tells you whether the increase is likely to reflect a real shift in the broader fan experience rather than ordinary sample noise.
A statistically significant result does not mean most fans had the problem. It means the issue appears to have moved meaningfully in the attendee population, based on the survey sample.
Sources and notes
- Primary analysis source: the Stage 1 SIDECAR and the revised written report for HS5 2026.
- Theme dimensions used: security_mention, security_issue_aspect, staff_mention, staff_issue_aspect, presentation_mention, presentation_issue_aspect, plus the corresponding mention dimensions for ticketing, venue, concessions, fan engagement, and parking.
- Outcome and benchmark fields came from OVERALL_NUMRAT, RETURN_PROPENSITY, INTEREST_TEAM_DESC, HOMESTAND, HOMESTAND_NUM, and date in structured metadata.
- High-prevalence rule: an issue is labeled high prevalence when its HS mention rate reaches at least 10% of all HS respondents.
- Return denominator is the count of non-null return responses, not total survey count.
- Chart palette fallback used from the baseline registry for chart-only tokens not defined in the Mariners design system.
- Spotlight trigger applied using the default margin because the design system does not specify a spotlight margin.
- Bucket-chart omission: no game-presentation bucket chart was rendered in the figure manifest because no bucket met the full flagged-threshold rule in the SIDECAR.