Alright sorry for the long delay, I am just getting back into the swing of things from a long weekend out of town. I think I am almost entirely caught up, and truth be told I am happy for the extended break in the schedule at this point. Last week I said Well having been gone I have not had a chance to compile the rest of the data, I will do that this weekend and hopefully post for each team. 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: 13 matches last week, and 1 this week. So i am going to roll the next 3 weeks of game play into a single week 13+ thread, so that means I will not be creating a new one of these for a few weeks. I am not even going to try and list who is hosting over the next 3 weeks but I think it is most everyone. Comparison to This Point Last Season and All-Time Averages: Houston is definitely pulling a Sporting KC this year, and with that beautiful new stadium is it any wonder? Hopefully the reports of police brutality are not enough to keep away the Dynamo faithful. And SKC is pulling their own SKC again, while they may only be up ~7% against last season check out against the all-time average. Not to shabby. The rebound in Columbus is good to see, but still a ways to go to get back to all-time. Red Bull is starting to look worrisome, If DC can keep their first place form the relative scarcity of remaining home matches could help boost attendance. AAAQ Current Season and Historical End of Season: Still number one in the original ranking method, and gaining quickly in the updated AAAQ. Not really much more to say here, so just sit back and enjoy. For the other numbers, MLS has now completed 120 matches or 37.2% of the season. Of those 120 matches 76 have topped 15k, and the standard deviation is 8729. The median of team medians is 18219. Milestones: No Milestones to report this week.
Good stuff, as always, Edward. So, 10 teams over 18k? Not too shabby. And a shout out to Colorado. They've been under the radar a bit IMO, but they have shown real improvement over both last year and their historic averages.
Nope, according to Ole we're still an also-ran team that has serious problems and don't deserve credit...
hey. i give total props to Colorado for the past two weeks ... very good attendance and an improvement over the shaky start to the season. let's hope they can keep it up. having said that ... they are still right in the middle of the pack and well behind the league average and median ... so nobody needs to be doing cartwheels quite yet.
To be fair, I've had concerns in years past too, but it's time to give some credit where it's due. I can't comment about the experience in the stadium, but there is a noticeable difference in the buzz for the telecasts IMO. Not only to more people appear to be in the stands, they seem more engaged in the game. Of the original markets (plus Chicago) -- the so called MLS 1.0 markets -- only New York and Kansas City have higher attendance, and New York isn't too much higher. The front office, ticket reps and SGs should feel pretty good about this IMO.
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: 107 120 (*fixed games played - edwardgr) Total Attnd: 2,230,851 Average Attnd: 18,590 Median Attnd: 18,051 Median-33%: 12,040 Median+33%: 24,080 <MED-33%: 23 / 19.2% >MED+33%: 12 / 10.0% Average %CAP: 82.0% Median %CAP: 86.0% Games <70%: 33 / 27.5% Games >90%: 54 / 45.0% 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.
A a shaky start to the season that nobody predicted with the earlier start date. No, wait, that's wrong, they did predict it. Thank you for proving my point.
Amazing what happens when you work with the supporters groups instead of against them isn't it. I don't think its a coincidence that the Rapids attendance numbers started turning around in 2010 when they opened the Terraces and greatly improved their relationship with the SG's.
Triplet beat me to it, but I think it bears repeating. Colorado's attendance is in the top 4 of the original teams (i.e. '96 teams + Chicago). I'm not sure it's correct to compare original team attendance to expansion team attendance 1-to-1. SKC is making a strong counter-argument, though. Maybe Colorado can identify an additional path to higher attendance -- maybe you don't have to blow up the ownership and build a fancy new stadium. It'll be interesting to see what happens in the next 2-3 years there.
1. For years, I've off and on made the point that improvements in the weaker markets like Dallas and Colorado were important for the average and median. Dallas could go from horrific to bad, and that would be as important as, say, DC going from average to excellent. (They've obviously gone in the other direction.) In short, the improvements in Dallas and Colorado are really underrated when we talk about the improvements in the numbers. We talk about the star performers in Sandy and Seattle and Kansas City, and we talk about the weaklings like Chivas and Columbus, and almost never talk about the little engines that could. 2. If you look at the historical trends, from this point of the season to the end we almost always see an increase in the median and average of a few hundred. Based on that, you can't rule out a 19,000 average. But I'm wondering if we're hitting a bit of a ceiling. I mean, the historical trends include Kansas City (for example) having their attendance go up. But that's not going to happen this year. Portland isn't going to go up. Etc. So maybe we won't see that 300 to 800 increase this year.
Agreed. I think people have been a bit harsh on Colorado -- yes, I'm sure Jasonma's right and some of the wounds were self inflicted by earlier conflicts with the SGs -- but competition for the sports dollar in metro Denver is fierce. Put it this way, the Denver MSA isn't much bigger than the Portland MSA -- they are the 21st and 23rd largest in the country, respectively -- but Denver is also supporting NFL football, MLB and NHL hockey in addition to MLS and the NBA. Put differently, Denver is the smallest MSA that manages to support teams in all five major U.S. professional leagues. That's a lot of tickets to sell, particularly when chasing corporate dollars. Which, to me, makes this turnaround all the more impressive.
Portland could still open additional capacity. Seattle will have 3 full stadium capacity matches, I would guess no less than 45k for each of these, but would be surprised if it is less than 50k each. An 'extra' Seattle match in terms of attendance moves the season average by 111+ people. DC has limited matches remaining and a first place team, that could bring back the crowds. Houston is likely to remain strong because of the new stadium. Now next season otoh....
Not sure how to do the link thing in the new BS - but the link below has the UEFA benchmarking report which includes some attendance data people in this thread might find interesting. One milestone you might want to look at is total attendance. For example I think the next set of games, the YTD attendance will start passing total MLS attendance for some years. You can also compare totals for different UEFA leagues. Another thing they look at is growth vs capacity restraints and the number of clubs at 75 % attendance. http://www.uefa.com/MultimediaFiles/Download/Tech/uefaorg/General/01/74/41/25/1744125_DOWNLOAD.pdf
this is pretty interesting so i thought i'd throw out there a MLS Attendance list by % Capacity: Code: TEAM AVG CAP % CAP SKC 19,177 18,467 103.84% SSFC 38,587 38,500 100.23% HOU 22,039 22,039 100.00% PTFC 20,438 20,438 100.00% IMFC 36,498 36,600 99.72% PHI 18,313 18,500 98.99% RSL 18,486 20,213 91.46% VWFC 19,012 21,000 90.53% TFC 18,889 21,140 89.35% COL 15,194 18,086 84.01% LAG 22,242 27,000 82.38% SJE 11,668 15,009 77.74% CHV 13,632 18,800 72.51% CHI 14,087 20,000 70.43% DCU 13,668 19,647 69.57% CLB 13,037 20,145 64.72% FCD 13,181 20,500 64.30% RBNY 15,823 25,000 63.29% NER 11,598 20,000 57.99% I'd say that if every team was at 80% or above the league and every team could be considered "doing well". As it stands SJE's %CAP is skewed a bit from their game away from Buckshaw and even still they are at 78% so i'd put them in the "healthy" category. The rest of the teams below SJE seem to be the "strugglers" so to speak ... the usual suspects ... CHV, CHI, DCU, CLB, FCD, NER ... and RBNY. Looking at %CAP it seems that Colorado fits in nicely at the bottom of the "doing okay/well" teams and RBNY is firmly in the "struggler" category which is probably more true than what the straight average indicates ... which is both COL and RBNY are in the middle of the pack and a bit below AVG and MED.
NY is a perfect example why i don't think percent capacity is a particularly informative number. if they had built a 20k stadium, and were getting 79% capacity, would they be more healthy with the same attendance? if LA were to end up playing in a much larger stadium, would they be less healthy? percent cap can give us information, but its not a good indicator of the health of a team.
that would only be the case if the size of a stadium was totally arbitrary .... most teams build a stadium the size they ideally want to fill/grow to ... so RBNY chose to build that 25K stadium .... not a 20K stadium. the reason is they thought they could and they wanted to have 25K fans a game ... the fact they are not doing that is in fact an indicator of the health of the team compared to the expectations the team itself set by building a stadium of a certain size. now the few teams that have not built their own stadiums are in a slightly different position but almost every one of them (CHV, NER, DCU) have set the "capacities" at their idealized number (just like they would if they built their own SSS) so holding them to that number by using %CAP is totally fair and is an indicator of the "health" of the team by comparing the actual attendance to the ideal attendance the club itself has set.
you get it right at first, "most teams build a stadium the size they ideally want to fill/grow to" then go on to offer the faulty perspective that overvalues percent cap, "so RBNY chose to build that 25K stadium .... not a 20K stadium. the reason is they thought they could and they wanted to have 25K fans a game ... the fact they are not doing that is in fact an indicator of the health of the team compared to the expectations the team itself set by building a stadium of a certain size." NY built a 25k stadium so they can grow into it. the fact that they haven't finished growing into it in the 2 years its been open, isn't an indicator of health. and you act like mid to long term growth goals are somehow indicative of current health. how does the attendance a team would like to achieve over say the next 10 years, have any bearing on the current health of a team? is a team with an overly optimistic ownership group, building a 40k stadium and getting 25k attendance, less healthy than an overly pessimistic ownership group building a 15k stadium and getting 14k attendance? personally, i'd say the team getting the 25k is far healthier than the 14k attendance team, even with a much much worse percent cap number. percent cap only becomes even passingly useful as a health indicator in a much more popular, more mature league.
Yeah, I'm curious too. In sports in general, attendance goes up the year AFTER a team has a good year; if DC keeps playing like they're playing, winning more than their share while scoring lots of goals, their attendance will go way up next year. If their attendance goes up 1900 per game, that boosts the league average by 100. I wonder if Edward was saying attendance was going to dip in 2013, or if the league would hit 19,000 average. Does SJ's new place open up next year? That would do it.
san jose only has a 10525 person stadium right now. its going to help tremendously when they open the 18000 person stadium next season. I think adding 4500-6000 to their average will be a big deal.
This is cool. Here's one of their charts: I added where MLS would be (assuming $20/person matchday income). This peer group is for the leagues with an average team revenue of €5-€50 million, which I assume is accurate for MLS. Anyway, despite falling into the low range for average total revenue, MLS looks pretty good on this graph, and could be compared with the Eredivisie in matchday revenue. It looks like MLS is really only missing TV money to be able to match these leagues in total revenue.