Major League Baseball appears immune to the sluggish economy and could set another attendance record this season. But the Rangers, on pace for their first winning season in four years, are suffering at the gate.

The team returns to Arlington tonight for the first time since the All-Star Game. Home attendance has averaged about 20 percent less than through the same number of dates in 2007. So far this season, about half of the available tickets have sold for each game on average.

If that rate holds the rest of the season, the Rangers would record their lowest average attendance since 1988, the year before Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan – now the team's president – first took the mound at old Arlington Stadium.

Yes, the team got off to a slow start, June and July have been unusually hot, and the top opposing attractions haven't yet come to town.

The economy also is taking its toll. North Texas fans are making tough choices as gasoline and grocery prices increase and the threat of recession looms.

"With $4 gasoline, I think a lot of people are choosing other forms of entertainment," said sports business expert Craig Depken of Rangers fans. Dr. Depken is a former UT-Arlington professor who now teaches at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

Rangers management is hopeful about the second half of the season. After the slow start on the field, the team is playing well. And there are seven home games remaining against their biggest draws, the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox, starting with the upcoming homestand. Last year, the Rangers' nine home dates against the Yankees and Red Sox came in April and May.

"When the season is over, attendance will be very comparable to last year," said Mr. Ryan, who returned to the organization in February.

But the second half also brings challenges. There's more Texas heat, of course. And the Cowboys are back in training camp.

The biggest challenge might be simple math. To equal the 2007 attendance, the Rangers must average about 35,200 for each of their remaining 35 home dates. On an annual basis, they haven't come close to that level since 2001, Alex Rodriguez's first season here.

"We might not equal last year, but we're going to do better than we did earlier in the year," said Dale Petroskey, first-year executive vice president for marketing. "That's for sure."

One of those fans making tough choices is Joe Siegler, who writes the rangerfans.com blog and says he attended as many as 20 to 25 games a season just a few years ago.

"Do I spend the money on my family for food or on the Rangers?" he said.

Mr. Siegler lives in Garland, 33 miles from the stadium. Because his 2004 Dodge Dakota pickup gets 15 miles to the gallon, he figures he spends $16 on gas getting to and from a game.

Add parking and "that's $28 before I've even bought my ticket," he said. This year, he figures, he'll see only six games. Part of that reduction is because of a church commitment but a big part is the economy.

Dr. Depken said teams in large geographic markets such as North Texas are affected most by higher transportation costs, especially if – as in Arlington – there is no mass transit alternative.

Mr. Petroskey, former president of the Baseball Hall of Fame, said the Rangers started the season behind as season-ticket sales were down 15 percent. He attributes that to last season's 75-87 record and fan worries about the economy.

Currently, Mr. Petroskey said, trends are up for the year in the categories of single-game, walk-up, suite and group sales.

Fan interest and attendance don't build or decline overnight based on a team's play, Mr. Ryan said, pointing to the Houston Astros, another of his former teams. This season, he said, the losing Astros still are benefiting from their strong performance "over the last few years" that included a trip to the 2005 World Series.

Not only is Rangers' attendance declining, so is the club's relative performance against other major league teams.

From 1998 through 2007, the Rangers' rank in average home attendance among the clubs ranged from as high as ninth place to as low as 18th, according to analysis of data compiled by ESPN, the Baseball Almanac and MLB. Before the break this year, the Rangers' average of 24,941 ranked 25th.

Only Oakland, Tampa Bay, Kansas City, Pittsburgh and Florida had averaged fewer fans at the break.

For all of 2007, the Rangers averaged 29,796; at this point last season, the Rangers averaged 31,510.

On TV, the Rangers are attracting more viewers this season. On FSN Southwest, ratings have increased every month since the start of the season and were up 16 percent from a year ago through the All-Star break, spokesman Ramon Alvarez said.

The July 10 home game, during which the Rangers forced the first-place Los Angeles Angels to extra innings after trailing by six runs, was the highest-rated game since August 2005. It was seen by an average of 97,670 area homes. Between 10:15 p.m. and 11:30 p.m., an average of nearly 147,000 homes tuned in.

Mr. Ryan said he is encouraged by the enthusiasm that he detects among fans at the ballpark. The number of no-shows – people who buy tickets but don't use them – is down 14 percentage points from last year. In baseball, reported attendance reflects the number of tickets issued, not the number of people who attend a game.

The team has tried a gasoline promotion (a $5 coupon with a ticket), offers all-you-can-eat seats and free tickets to teachers. A new marketing campaign features the team's 2008 All-Stars in TV commercials.

This year's marketing budget equals last year's, Mr. Ryan said. The Rangers won't release specifics on the size of the marketing budget.

Mr. Ryan thinks some fans in Far North Dallas and Collin County might be choosing to go see the Rangers' Double-A minor league team, the Frisco RoughRiders, instead of Rangers games on weeknights. Going into last weekend, the Riders' attendance was up over last year by 99 fans per date.

But he doesn't think the RoughRiders cost the Rangers any weekend traffic. Nor does he think the new independent minor league team in Grand Prairie, the AirHogs, hurts the Rangers. The AirHogs are averaging about 3,000 fans a game in their inaugural season.

The economy doesn't seem to be hurting the Cowboys or the Stars.

"We're basically sold out," says Cowboys spokesman Rich Dalrymple of the team's upcoming final year at Texas Stadium before it moves to its new stadium in Arlington.

Jeff Cogen, president of the Stars, says season-ticket sales for 2008-09 are tracking about 1,000 ahead of last season's pace, which eventually totaled 12,500. Mavericks owner Mark Cuban declined to comment on whether the economy is affecting his team.

Roughly 12 percent of Stars fans last year used DART rail or the TRE to get to games, Mr. Cogen said. That's not an option in Arlington, though Arlington Mayor Robert Cluck hopes that will change.

"We're getting more and more interest in public transportation," Mr. Cluck said. He eventually foresees a "seamless" rail system linking Arlington and its sports stadiums to Dallas and Fort Worth.

Mr. Cogen served as president of the Rangers from 2004 through last November, when he returned to owner Tom Hicks' other local big-league team. When Mr. Cogen was with the Rangers, he said, he never forgot that they offered the most affordable pro ticket in town.

On a weighted average basis, Rangers tickets are among the most moderately priced in the majors, according to data on sports economist Rodney Fort's Web site.

But price tells only part of the story. This month, Sports Illustrated published what it called a fan price index for cities with big-league teams, comparing the cost of going to a game with the cost of living in each city.

In Texas, SI wrote, the price of being a fan exceeds the cost of living. San Antonio, Houston and Dallas ranked first, second and third, respectively.

That's another challenge the Rangers face as they begin the second part of their home season.