ST. PETERSBURG, FL (970 WFLA) -- The "Tebow Effect" is giving a big boost to minor league baseball in Florida, as it did in South Carolina earlier this year.
The former Florida Gator quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner has been playing baseball with the New York Mets' farm club in the Single-A Florida State League. Minor League Baseball says Tebow contributed to a 12 percent increase in league attendance this year.
Jeff Lantz is communications director for "M-I-L-B", which is based in St. Petersburg. He says FSL teams went from averaging 1,300 fans a game to more like 1,500. "Tebow is obviously a big part of that", Lantz says.
"He brought people out to the ballpark that maybe weren't baseball fans... but they wanted to come see Tim Tebow play... and that's great for our teams to be able to expose their product... to these fans, and hopefully get them to come back later."
Tebow's team, the St. Lucie Mets, set a team attendance record with 132,359 fans, third-best in the Florida State League. The team with the best attendance, the Clearwater Threshers, saw atendance top 200,000, giving it the second highest total in FSL history. The Threshers had Tebow and the SL Mets for four games in August.
Minor League Baseball says Tebow helped the South Atlantic League with a 2 percent attendance increase, when he played for the Columbia (SC) Fireflies earlier this year.