Jays jerseys abound as baseball fans help Seattle amid tourism slide

SEATTLE — Pike Place Market artist and vendor Daniel Fleming says Toronto Blue Jays fans typically show up in Seattle in droves for games against the Mariners, and the ongoing American League Championship Series has been no different.

He said the city and market seem insulated from political tensions between Canada and the United States that have seen Canadian visits south plunge.

“Toronto Blue Jays fandom travels maybe as well as any other fandom I’ve ever encountered,” Fleming said Thursday. “They come to town, they spend money, they support small business and whatnot.”

The market was bustling with people getting photos in front of the first Starbucks that opened there in 1971, while others were capturing video of the famous fish-tossing ritual that Pike Place is known for.

Fleming said this tourism season seemed “fairly normal,” although he’s noticed a drop in Korean and Chinese tourists, and he believes the political fallout might manifest more starkly next year.

“Pike Place Market, as far as looking at that kind of stuff, is maybe isolated from the statistical norms,” he said. “I would suspect Washington state, I would expect Seattle’s getting way less Canadian travellers but using the baseball game and the jerseys and whatnot as my barometer, there seemed to be a lot of people out.”

However, Visit Seattle, the city’s tourism marketing organization, is forecasting a 26 per cent drop in international visitors this year, calling it the largest drop for a major city in the U.S. due to its dependence on Canada.

The numbers were crunched by the international advisory firm Oxford Economics earlier this year.

Tammy Canavan, president of Visit Seattle, said in an interview Thursday that officials are “delighted to see Blue Jays fans in the city.”

“We’ve traditionally seen a lot of our Canadian friends come down for the game and it’s been a wonderful rivalry,” Canavan said.

Canavan is from Vancouver and has been living in the United States for 25 years.

She said Seattle feels “a lot like home,” with similar culture, weather and values, but the forecasted drop in visitors revealed “how there is some hesitation and there are some strong feelings about Canadians crossing the border into the United States right now.”

She has family in Canada who have given her a deeper understanding into people’s feelings about visiting amid tariffs and rhetoric about the 51st state from U.S. President Donald Trump, she said.

“We hope that in time that relationship will become stronger and we’ll start to see that rebound to a more normal pattern,” she said. “The politics are not necessarily the people, right?”

Fans in the city for the games said they travelled to Seattle without regard for politics.

Kurt and Tracey Bessey, siblings from Saskatoon, flew to Vancouver and bused to Seattle because it was cheaper than flying to Toronto for a game.

Kurt Bessey said he was last here a decade ago for a Seahawks game, and though Seattle has changed since his last visit with many shops closing, the people have not.

“The people here are awesome, they’re really friendly,” he said.

Tracey Bessey said people have been friendly and cheerful towards them as Canadians in conspicuous hoodies, hers with a small Canadian flag embroidered on the sleeve.

But they said they did get a lot of questions when they crossed the border, which wasn’t typical in their past experiences.

“It seemed, like, weird. I’ve been through the border several times,” Kurt said.

“We had all our Jays stuff on so you know why we’re here,” Tracey added.

They said rival fans at Game 3 were friendly and the good-natured trash talk quieted down when the Jays pulled out ahead, winning handily 13-4.

Back at Pike Place, where Fleming has been selling his work for two decades, he said he’s apologetic to Canadians for Trump’s rhetoric aimed at Canada.

However, he said he doesn’t think Canadians need much convincing to visit a city like Seattle despite the current political conflict.

“As far as encouraging people, you know, don’t believe the hype,” he said. “I think that you look at a lot of stuff worldwide when there is conflict and you talk to people at large on the street … you will find that the people of a place are not the government of that place.”

Visit Seattle says Canadians spent $586 million in the city and the King County area last year.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 16, 2025.

Darryl Greer, The Canadian Press