MLS Attendance Analysis: PreSeason

Discussion in 'MLS: News & Analysis' started by edwardgr, Jan 15, 2014.

  1. POdinCowtown

    POdinCowtown Member+

    Jan 15, 2002
    Columbus
    Not at this point. The stadium is owned by PSV but the land under it is part of the state fairgrounds. It was leased for 25 years in 1999, with a team option to renew. We're now more than half way through the lease and Precourt would like to replace CCS with something like SKC has, but that would require public funding which isn't currently on offer. So we muddle along.
     
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  2. MobileSoccerFan

    May 14, 2012
    Club:
    Houston Dynamo
    Amazing how much the ticket situation has changed in Houston with the new stadium. The scarcity between the Rob and BBVA is crazy. I walked up on gameday in 2012 and got middle section about south 40 yard line on the west side of the Rob for $25-30. Looking up trips for this year and corner upper deck is going for north of $50. Still early though, but yea.
     
  3. crookeddy

    crookeddy Member+

    Apr 27, 2004
    I never preordered Galaxy tickets at the Rose Bowl, and never not preordered tickets at HDC (Stubhub)
     
  4. aperfectring

    aperfectring Member+

    Jul 13, 2011
    Hillsboro, OR
    Club:
    Portland Timbers
    Alright, I've put some thought into exactly what kind of analysis I think could be interesting or helpful to contribute, and I figured I would run them by the people who usually occupy these threads to see what you guys think:

    1. Sliding window average/median. The average/median attendance for teams over the last X games or X timeperiod. I would provide previous season and previous week averages/medians for comparison. I have thought of two different ways to do this:
    • Over the last 17 games (or however many home games the season has if that changes).
    • Over the last calendar year.
    2. Provide a "score" value for each game's attendance.

    I've been working on exactly what kind of algorithm to use for assigning the "score", and have settled on using the CDF for the normal/Gaussian distribution. I would use the previous season's average and standard deviation, so the scores would be consistent throughout the whole season. Scores would have a valid range of 0-100, and a game which lands on the average attendance would be a 50.

    For each game, I would provide a league-wide and an individual team score, so you could assess how the game fares in both the league, and how it fares for the individual team. This lets us compare any given game against the league as a whole, as well as against other home games for that team.

    The Timbers provide a unique challenge. The standard deviation for their attendance for the 2013 season is 0, which means that the CDF is undefined. My current thought on how to deal with this is to define the Timbers CDF as follows: CDF(x) = {0 when x<A2013, 50 when x=A2013, 100 when x>A2013}. A2013 is the average attendance for 2013 (or previous season). In general, this would be the case which would be used whenever the standard deviation is 0, not necessarily just for the Timbers. Another option is to use a set value (maybe 10% of average) for the standard deviation. I don't particularly like either of those options, but the only other thing I can think of is to make the team score N/A in that case.

    Examples, using 2013 end of season values for average and standard deviation:
    Galaxy game with 27,000: league score 85, team score 92
    Sounders game with 38,500: league score 99, team score 28
    Chivas game with 12,000: league score 20, team score 97
    Fire game with 20,000: league score 57, team score 96

    Note that a sellout (or above capacity) isn't necessarily a score of 100. The score is more of a comparison of how the game compares to the games from the previous season. If a team sells out often, they shouldn't necessarily get a high team score just because they sold out.



    Please let me know what you think of these metrics. I am also open for suggestions, both for other metrics, or for improvements to the ones I mentioned.
     
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  5. fuzzx

    fuzzx Member+

    Feb 4, 2012
    Brossard
    Club:
    Montreal Impact
    Nat'l Team:
    Canada
    That sounds pretty cool.

    I expect pretty pictures, otherwise it's useless :)
     
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  6. edwardgr

    edwardgr Moderator
    Staff Member

    Mar 6, 2006
    Seattle
    Club:
    Seattle Sounders
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I would never include current years data in the comparison too set. That is good for trend and predictive models but I think of dubious value for what you are looking for. Last year Chivas would have been a great example, early games would have craptacular numbers, but because of the rolling window that last match would have looked relatively good. By keeping the comparison to this year against a set historic window, or even last year alone you are better able to assign a value to the current health, IMHO. But I do like the idea.

    And fuzzx are you saying my stuff is useless since I don't include pictures :cry:?
     
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  7. aperfectring

    aperfectring Member+

    Jul 13, 2011
    Hillsboro, OR
    Club:
    Portland Timbers
    I don't expect to have tons of time to get this stuff coded up (starting a new job in a week). I might have some pretty pictures later on, but initially it will probably just be tables.

    I don't particularly know what part you are referring to with this comment, could you please clarify?

    Reading back over it, I guess it doesn't seem particularly clear that these are two separate things that I plan to do. The rolling window is one data set. The per game "scores" are a different data set, which is not based on a rolling window, but solely the prior season's data (in this case 2013).
     
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  8. edwardgr

    edwardgr Moderator
    Staff Member

    Mar 6, 2006
    Seattle
    Club:
    Seattle Sounders
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Ah okay that makes sense now, somehow when I read it and re-read it this afternoon at work it did not occur to me that you were referring to two separate measures. I have been fighting a low grade headache all day though so my cognitive functions have been impaired.
     
  9. MLSFan123

    MLSFan123 Member+

    Mar 21, 2011
    Boston Area
    Club:
    New England Revolution
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    http://blogs.canoe.ca/reds/sports/toronto-fc-anticipating-sold-out-bmo-field-in-2014/
    ====================
    Toronto FC will release a final block of 500 season tickets later today before capping its season seat holder base at 17,000.

    The Toronto Sun learned early Monday that TFC has enjoyed a league-leading renewal rate of 95% among existing season seat holders on top of selling an additional 2,700 news seats ahead of the 2014 season.
     
  10. fuzzx

    fuzzx Member+

    Feb 4, 2012
    Brossard
    Club:
    Montreal Impact
    Nat'l Team:
    Canada
    Given the reports we heard a couple weeks back that's not surprising, in fact i'm most surprised there are still 500 left!
     
  11. superdave

    superdave Member+

    Jul 14, 1999
    VB, VA
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I think we're set for two consecutive seasons of "best attendance ever."
     
  12. fuzzx

    fuzzx Member+

    Feb 4, 2012
    Brossard
    Club:
    Montreal Impact
    Nat'l Team:
    Canada
    Chivas.
     
  13. edwardgr

    edwardgr Moderator
    Staff Member

    Mar 6, 2006
    Seattle
    Club:
    Seattle Sounders
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    If Chivas goes no lower than last year, it is entirely possible given the expected gains in Seattle, San Jose, Toronto, Portland(?) that we may break the 2012 mark. We were not off by that much last year to begin with even with the CUSA disaster. As long as no other team tanks we will in all likelihood top 2012.
     
  14. firefan2001

    firefan2001 Member+

    Dec 27, 2000
    Oswego, Illinois
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    19,000+ average in 2014....
     
  15. edwardgr

    edwardgr Moderator
    Staff Member

    Mar 6, 2006
    Seattle
    Club:
    Seattle Sounders
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I would not make that bet at least not without evaluating all the teams numbers. 18600-18750 would be my top of the head guess. 19k in 2015 though almost seems a foregone conclusion with NYCFC and OCSC coming on board.
     
  16. fuzzx

    fuzzx Member+

    Feb 4, 2012
    Brossard
    Club:
    Montreal Impact
    Nat'l Team:
    Canada
    I was mostly joking since, you know... Chivas. But just like 2013 I think 19,000 is a reasonable goal to aim for in 2014.

    We got surprisingly close this past season and it only takes a few increases to get us over.

    A surprising season by any of Chicago, Columbus, NE, NY, etc could single handedly get us in the ballpark. Also the Portland capacity increase, TFC sellouts and more Sounders full stadium games mean we have a higher baseline to work with.

    Not a guarantee, but I think we have at least as good a shot as we did in 2013
     
  17. aperfectring

    aperfectring Member+

    Jul 13, 2011
    Hillsboro, OR
    Club:
    Portland Timbers
    Portland's increase won't even really budge the needle on the league-wide season attendance. If you increase Portland's attendance to 21000, which is more than it will be this year from everything I've heard, you increase last year's average from 18608 to 18625.
     
  18. fuzzx

    fuzzx Member+

    Feb 4, 2012
    Brossard
    Club:
    Montreal Impact
    Nat'l Team:
    Canada
    I know, I mentioned it only in the wider context of Seattle and Toronto, where we have an increase in "guaranteed" attendance over last year.

    Other than that we have IMO KC, Houston and Montreal with relatively predictable, stable attendance curves then everyone else with a much wider range of possible numbers.
     
  19. superdave

    superdave Member+

    Jul 14, 1999
    VB, VA
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Also, San Jose's new building.
     
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  20. aperfectring

    aperfectring Member+

    Jul 13, 2011
    Hillsboro, OR
    Club:
    Portland Timbers
    Quick, BOE calculation, we need a net increase of ~7500 in the individual teams' average attendance (just shy of 400 increase for each team)

    Let's state some speculations/assumptions:
    Seattle sells 39,000 tickets to their "normal" attendance games, and averages 60,000 for their 5 full-stadium games. This puts them at 1,000 more than last year.
    San Jose goes up by 500 from last year, to their 2012 attendance.
    Toronto goes up to an average of a bit over 20,000, an increase of 2,000.
    Between Houston, Portland, KC, and Montreal, I'd say it ends up being a wash, with a slight preference towards being slightly positive.
    Those are all of the teams which are relatively easy to predict.

    That gives us a total of 3,500 increase, less than half of the needed increase in order to get above a 19k average.

    The remaining teams are the ones which it is much harder to predict whether they will increase or decrease in attendance. My best guess is that unless Chivas has a major rebound, those 14 teams end up basically being a wash, or only a slight increase, and nowhere near the 4,000 needed to hit 19k.

    With the 3,500 increase from the "easy to predict" teams, that puts us basically at the top of edwardgr's range. I think we can challenge for the all-time attendance record this year, but breaking 19k will have to wait until at least 2015.
     
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  21. POdinCowtown

    POdinCowtown Member+

    Jan 15, 2002
    Columbus
    At this point Columbus isn't excited about the Crew. A couple of long time favorite players, Eddie Gaven and Chad Marshall are gone. Team prospects aren't especially bright for this season. New coach is an unknown. Crew traditionally draw poorly in the spring and better in the fall. So expect a slow start attendance wise from Cbus.
     
  22. firefan2001

    firefan2001 Member+

    Dec 27, 2000
    Oswego, Illinois
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Missed by 126,513, Seattle is having 5 whole stadium games, Portland in increasing capacity and Toronto is going to sellout the season. Toronto's capacity is 21,800 they averaged 18,131 last year, that could be 62,000 increase 1/2 way to the 126,513. Seattle's 2013 attendance was 748,652 (four whole stadium games), they could get 15,000-25,000 more.

    I think we have a really good chance this year to get 19,000+

    Can Chivas go any lower (8,366)?
     
  23. MLSFan123

    MLSFan123 Member+

    Mar 21, 2011
    Boston Area
    Club:
    New England Revolution
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I thought Orlando was building an 18k stadium (which if no standing room would actually hurt the chance to break 19k)?....?
     
  24. Sounders78

    Sounders78 Member+

    Apr 20, 2009
    Olympia
    Club:
    Seattle Sounders
    Nat'l Team:
    France
    Where there's a Chivas, there's a way.
     
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  25. edwardgr

    edwardgr Moderator
    Staff Member

    Mar 6, 2006
    Seattle
    Club:
    Seattle Sounders
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    You are right of course. Do we know for certain that they will have 18k only? Sporting ostensibly built what 18-18.5 but they go over that. So until we see renderings we should not assume that it will be either the Colorado or Sporting model in Orlando. I believe however that they will be opening the season at the new FCB, the number of games there will likely dictate their final number. I also expect NYCFC to have solid or solid+ (Solid Gold?) attendance.
     

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