Okay so first things first, I will be out of town from Thursday night until midday Monday with absolutely no internet access whatsoever. So that being said next Monday evening is the earliest week 12 will be posted. Over the weekend I managed to get a new statistic together that shows what teams average in the first and second games when they play home games within five days of each other. What I have not added to that same data set is what the games that are outside of those two games draw.. Once I do that I will make a prelimary posting of that data, and it will then be included in the team centric posts I do at seasons end going forward. Remember in this thread we discuss the: (AAQ = Attendance Analysis Quotient. This figure is an overall attendance assessment, calculated from the weighted values of average attendance, median attendance, <10K percentage and >20K percentage. A lower figure represents a better attendance performance.) This is a slight change from Andy's old formula which used simple ordinal values and provided a full ranking point separation for two numbers that may have been within a percentage. This ordinal system did not allow for fine differences to be seen, and may have painted a somewhat skewed view of the numbers (though to be honest there is not much difference in the two end of season sets). The formula to find the weighted value for each column is: Take the annual value and subtract it from the Max value for it's column. Then take that result and divide it by the (Max-Min) for its column. For example, for the average column 17869 is the max 13756 is the min 4113 is the difference To calculate the derived value for 2010 Subtract 16675 from 17869 to get 1194. Divide 1194 by 4113 then mulitply by 100* to get 29 *Note that this step is new as some people thought whole numbers would be easier to read. MLS Attendance is based on tickets distributed not tickets scanned. Therefore if a team sells or distributes X number of tickets, then X is the attendance for that match. Even if 0 people showed up for whatever reason, X would still be the official attendance. There are a number of reasons actual attendance may be lower or higher than the announced.
Last Weeks Attendance, and Upcoming Matches: So 11 matches last week give way to 13 this week, which may be a record. I have not gone back and checked, but it is hard to imagine any week outside of the last few season having a chance at this many. Oh and not only is it 13 home matches, it is 13 home matches with 4 on Wednesday night, and no double hosting! That means it is easier to say who is not hosting this week: San Jose, Philly, New England, FC Dallas, Montreal, and Vancouver are the road only teams. Comparison to This Point Last Season and All-Time Averages: Not really a whole lot of change here. Chivas and DC are still down, but have made some gains on last season. Vancouver still slightly down, but the first Cascadia match helped a little. Time will tell if the moves Chivas made will change the attendance any. AAAQ Current Season and Historical End of Season: So in the original this season jumps to number 1, and 1996 falls to number 3. The updated will show that this season is still number 2, but is rapidly gaining. We are in some danger of following behind last seasons median as the two are very close. As for the rest of the data, through this past weekend MLS has completed 107 matches or 33.1% of the season. Of those 107 matches, 67 have topped 15k, and the standard deviation is 8967. Finally the median of team medians is 17924. Milestones: No Milestones to report this week.
2011 Games Played: 306 Total Attnd: 5,467,880 Average Attnd: 17,869 Median Attnd: 17,639 Median-33%: 11,765 Median+33%: 23,530 <MED-33%: 56 / 18.3% >MED+33%: 36 / 11.8% Average %CAP: 81.0% Median %CAP: 85.7% Games <70%: 86 / 28.1% Games >90%: 139 / 45.4% 2012 Games Played: 107 Total Attnd: 1,989,330 Average Attnd: 18,592 Median Attnd: 18,075 Median-33%: 12,056 Median+33%: 24,112 <MED-33%: 22 / 20.6% >MED+33%: 11 / 10.3% Average %CAP: 81.8% Median %CAP: 85.8% Games <70%: 29 / 27.1% Games >90%: 48 / 44.9% NOTES 1. For information regarding 2011 stadium capacities go HERE. 2. Per 2012 MLS Team Media Guides the following are the standard capacities for each team's regular home stadium: CHI (20,000); CHV (18,800); COL (18,086); CLB (20,145); DCU (19,647); FCD (20,500); HOU (22,000); LAG (27,000); MTL (20,341); NER (20,000); NYR (25,000); PHI (18,500); POR (20,438); RSL (20,213); SJE (10,525); SEA (38,500); SKC (18,467); TFC (21,140); VAN (21,000) 3. The following are capacity exceptions to the norms above: MON 3/17 (58,500); SJE 3/17 (41,915); MTL 4/7 (22,000); MTL 4/28 (22,000); MTL 5/12 (58,500); MTL 5/19 (22,000) 4. Some listed capacities are "seated only" and teams may have sold/had SRO attendance over this amount, thus putting the %CAP over 100% for certain games. For calculating the average and median %CAP for all games these 100%+ numbers were used as is.
It's getting to the point that we can start making intelligent guesses about where we end up. Working in our favor, is that Houston looks like it could put up solid >20K numbers for most if not all season in the new digs. That will positively affect across the board numbers in the ed's 4 statistical categories, since Houston has only completed 12% of it's home matches, vs 33% league-wide. On the other hand, we will get downward pressure due to Seattle already completing 41%, so for the balance of the season, Seattle will be underrepresented. The Avg will be partially offset by 3 full-stadium matches vs LAG/PDX/VAN, but those will have no affect on Median, <10 or >20. Also Montreal will be moving to Saputo soon, and the 60K outliers from them will be a thing of the past. They will probably stay above the Median and <10 numbers, but the inability to pull the giant numbers will more than offset the Avg gain Seattle will contribute. They will continue to give over-weighted contributions to the 3 other columns, so that is a positive. Under-weight for the rest of the way at 47% played are DCU and FCD, and so that limits the damage from them, although with DCU's run of form, they could still make a run at the median. The rest of the over weights is about a 50-50 mix of teams on either side of the median. I'm sure that we will have a "banner year" in terms of AAAQ, but while last year at this time, I think we were all to the point where we were "expecting" the records to fall. This year, I am starting to expect that we are looking at close to 50-50 whether or not we set a new AAAQ standard. I think last years AVG will be hard to beat. I think we will probably barely set a new standard on Median <10K will almost certainly be a new standard. >20K will probably continue to be 2nd best to 1996, but probably 2011 as well. And I think that whenever SJE's new stadium gets here, that it will have a bigger impact than either HOU or SKC, if for no other reason than that Buck Shaw is bursting at the seams already.
By seasons end 2007 is the gold standard for >20k. I think it is fair to say this year could go anywhere from 1st to 3rd on that. Sub 10k should fall. Assuming I have remembered all the variables at this point we only need average 17063 going forward to top last years average. If we beat last years median will almost certainly beat the average.
with the summer still to come-- and invariably the attendances are usually better due to warmer weather fans and the dash for post-season play-- there is some hope for cracking the 19 000 season average (its sitting at almost 18 600)-- whatever happens, i think we can expect higher average attendance than 2011; lets not forget that montreal will still play some BIG games in the Olympic stadium-- when SJ builds their new stadium for 2014, and DC gets theirs done SOMEPLACE (and i believe they will by 2014-2015), and hopefully, NE, Dallas, Columbus and Chivas are a lot better (pushing a 14 500 average), and colorado and Chicago are regularly pushing a 16 500 average, then i think a 20 000 average is in sight, maybe by 2015-2016 i remember stating in 2011 that an average of 20 000 by 2015 would be a possibility and others scoffed at me... now i think we can all agree that it is a distinct possiblity, not wishful thinking the glass is half full now and MLS will continue to fill it up- its exciting times for soccer fans in NA for the rest of this decade and beyond
something to remember .... 3 of seattle's remaining home dates will be full stadium (VAN/POR/LAG) and probably average 50-55K over those 3 games. plus i think SJE has one more game at Standford Stadium which would bring in 40Kish ...
Bgix had accounted for the Seattle full stadium matches, but not the SJE Stanford game. What will help most though I think is Houston. They appear to be on track for a KC type season in the new stadium. There are also 7 matches total on July 3rd and 4th and a total of 16 matches that week with only FC Dallas and Montreal double hosting that week.
True for this season, but one should note that going forward 2-4 games per season are guaranteed to be played at the O every year(until 2015 at least). The home opener plus marquee teams such as LA. Thus given the ~20k numbers for the Toronto, Portland and NY games, the season average going forward should remain consistent.
seeing that beautiful stadium makes me sad ... chris heck and the entire marketing/sales department needs to be fired.
Chris Heck is a complete ********ing idiot. He basically wrecked the ST base in 10 short months. Making a case to be one of Metro's worst execs ever, and we have had some of the worst in the business over the years.
As a complete newcomer to the RBA situation(other than the regular references in many threads) im interested to hear what you are talking about. I figure its been written bout plenty, any good posts here or elsewhere you can recommend on the recent history?
And on the international friendly front, the Timbers played Valencia in a 1-0 loss in front of 19,564. High energy and entertaining match.
We really do only care about meaningful games. The TA had no CAPOS or Drum Corps tonight!! [But I don't think the game against Cal FC next week is going to be very well attended, still will be around 5,000 I suspect]
First of all, Edward, I'm really happy that you're doing this analysis of the effects of fixture congestion on attendance. I think it will be interesting to see how the numbers compare. Are there any instances where there is a home game sandwiched within 5 days on either side by home games? What Would you do in that situation? Something else you may want to consider - US Open Cup or CCL home matches, which would contribute to fixture congestion, but not show up on your big spreadsheet. Second - I wanted to note that despite the low attendance at the Chicago Fire game last night, the atmosphere seemed much livelier than many games I've watched lately. Of course, it might just be that Fox Sports Southwest is smart enough to adequately mike Section 8. Or I might be biased. Third - Now that I have my hands on some statistical software, I think I'll finally get around to doing that analysis I planned to do last summer. One of the things I want to do is run a regression on an individual game attendance including some variable selection with a bunch of possibly relevant factors. To that end, I wanted to list off the possible factors that I wanted to include (in approximate relative order of importance), and see if you guys had any thoughts as to what I might be missing. 1. Team (21 dummy variables) 2. Stadium(Team) (Unknown number of dummy variables; Stadium has unequal levels, and is nested within team; will require me to go through and list stadium for every game ever; for artificially capped stadia that often sell out (PTFC, SSFC), different maximum capacities within the same stadium will be counted as different stadia) 3. Visiting Team (21 dummy variables) 4. Day of Week (7 dummy variables) 5. Year (# of years since 1996; not sure if this should actually be included, since as we have seen, the first couple seasons are big outliers) 6. Fixture Congestion (# of home matches within X days of the match on either side; unsure as to the optimal value for X, but I'm thinking of using 7) 7. Season Opener/Finale (Dummy Variable; Should this be crossed with team?) 8. Month (Months since March; probably look for both a linear and quadratic trend) 9. Month*Team (because my hypothesized trend for Houston/Dallas is much different from the hypothesized trend in Chicago) ------ Other possibly relevant factors that I refuse to believe are influential enough to merit the trouble it would take to add those things to the model: Temperature; Precipitation; Team*Opposing Team (i.e. rivalry games); Competition (Would be interesting if we had data from other competitions); Is Beckham involved in this game? (Dummy Variable; would probably have to include some sort of exponential decay of the Beckham Effect; also, make judgement about whether most people would have reasonably believed Beckham would be in the US at the time of the game) If you have any thoughts that would make my life easier, let me know. One area in particular - If you know of a better way of looking up stadiums than going match-by-match on Wikipedia/MLSsoccer, that would be great.
