I haven't heard it myself if they do it, but the Quakes should be subsidizing the SF youth soccer scene. If there is to be a minor league team in SF, it should be at the PDL/NPSL level, subsidized by the Quakes to be the top level for their SF talent coming through their system. There should be no illusion to the team making money, because history has shown us that wont happen. I've been pretty vocal about minor league soccer being a pipe dream. This is the one scenario where it could work.
I think you could say that about any "sports town", and in fact I would argue that it is less true of the Bay Area than some other areas. The Warriors have had great fan support even after going years and years w/o making the playoffs. The Raiders have been probably the worst team in football the last 10 years or so, but they have gotten good attendance despite all of the awful teams. The Niners were poor for several years in a row, and didn't have much trouble selling tickets. The A's don't get very good attendance despite being good, so that's kind of the flip side of the argument. They are not necessarily showing up for the teams that are doing well (and not necessarily abandoning the teams that aren't doing well). So I think the relative popularity of a team is a bit of a multifaceted puzzle. You can't explain it away with just "team good / team not good". There's the history of the team - maybe there is some kind of legacy, distant or otherwise that has resulted in some loyalty / interest, the location of the team relative to fans that enjoy the sport, the quality of the venue, etc.
They have? Last I checked their attendance is so bad they had to reduce the capacity of the Coliseum down almost 10,000 below the next smallest stadium. And they still can't sell out forcing the team to use the league's new blackout amnesty rules and still buy huge blocks of discount tickets just to avoid continuing blackouts. Blackouts which the Raiders have had more of than any other franchise since their ill advised return to Oakland. Take yesterday for instance. If that's a true sellout I'll eat my hat. (Photo was taken midway through the 1st quarter).
You're right - they are near last in attendance in the NFL. But you are nit-picking. The larger point is that there are a number of factors beyond team performance that seem to affect attendance. In the Raider's case they have a venue issue (like the A's). The A's have a good team and lousy attendance; the Raiders have a lousy team and lousy attendance. So it doesn't seem like it's all about team performance.
The A's have a good team and saw one of the largest proportional increases in MLB attendance. This despite playing in the literal shithole that they do. And as for the Raiders, when they were good back at the turn of the millennium and made their super bowl run in 02 they did in fact sell out regularly and have great attendance. It wasn't until they started to suck that you could get tickets on Mt. Davis for under a dollar to blacked out games (I did that on more than one occasion). The Giants too started to see a fall off a couple years back before they made their world series run in 2010, despite playing in what is often regarded as one of the nicest stadiums in sports. And before Pac Bell the Giants attendance swung wildly depending on the quality of the team on field. Really only two teams seem immune to being impacted by their on field quality in the Bay Area, the Niners and Sharks. The former is the THE defacto Bay Area football team who the Raiders will always play second fiddle too (and is one of the big reasons they should just go back to LA where they have more fans to this day anyway). The latter is the only NHL team in the Bay Area and between having the new car smell and then being a consistent playoff team the Sharks really haven't had much time in the proverbial gutter.
Well put. And Jazzy is right in that winning isn't the only factor, but it is a pretty big factor. It depends some on the overarching history of sports in the region. Pro sports in the Bay Area are obviously much younger than many of their Eastern counterparts. History of the teams can make a difference, sure. My point was that the quality of the venue is a little less important than some people are making it out to be. Heck, the Earthquakes sold out more games the last two seasons than I ever remember them selling out before. Granted, 10,000 seats isn't huge, but the team was also very good for a bit. The Quakes did do a bit more to market themselves also, which probably helped. Excellent point about the Sharks, too. They haven't really had a bad season for a long time. If they ever start to really tank, I would bet attendance would drop by a pretty big margin, but we don't really have a history of bad performances to check against.
You are conveniently forgetting the Warriors, who continued to draw reasonably well despite years and years of failure. That fan base is frequently called out as one that is distinctly not fickle and not "fair weather". I would even add the Quakes as a team for whom performance doesn't make that much of a difference in attendance. 2004, opening game, after the 2003 championship, and I think they drew like 9k for the home opener. Whether they've done great or lousy, it doesn't seem to make a huge difference in the number of fans who show up. And as for the Giants, they started drawing really well as soon as they moved into the new stadium, and have not looked back. There may have been a little drop-off after the whole Bonds fiasco, but the stadium drives the attendance there, and performance is secondary. They continued to sell out, what, every game, this year, when they were sitting in last place or near last place most of the season. So again, performance is a part of the equation, but it is just one of many factors, including the quality of the venue, the team history / legacy, the general demographics of the fan base, etc., that affect team popularity.
I didn't forget the Warriors, but they too fit the mold of do well, more people show up, though not to the extreme of the other sports. In the late 90's their attendance was down when the Mullen/Hardaway era ended and they had their brief foray to San Jose. And it took until their playoff run 6 years ago to really bring attendance back up. Granted it's held since then, but the team has been fairly good on the whole since then as well. They also have the added advantage of being the only NBA game in town and the only option to go see stars like Kobe and LeBron when they're in town. And the Giants while more stable in AT&T Park still see some swings based on performance. While AT&T Park had the new car smell the team also was quite good in the early 2000's, making it to their amazing failure of a World Series appearance in 2002 (I still remember cracking the champagne when they blew that one). But by the late 2000's their attendance had started to fall off. It was the WS run in 2010 that damped that and brought them back up to near sell out attendance again. And while this year they did good despite being a pitiful team on field, you have to remember that a large number of their tickets were already locked up after their won the World Series in 2012. You won't see any kind of drop off until the year after, 2014.
The Warriors have made the playoffs, what, twice in the last 8 years, and just barely, and their attendance has been easily over 90% capacity all of those years. Exactly my point. There is a lot more to it than just team performance. "Only game in town" is exactly that type of reason, and why (in another thread I think) I made the point that I think the Quakes are less of a "small market team" than they are a "competing for attention in a medium-large to large market team". In terms of attendance challenges, I think they have more in common with say Chicago or even NYRB than they do Columbus.
I think a drop in attendance when a team is bad is seen in most sports. We all know Miami is a fickle sports town, but I was looking at the attendance for the Yankees and in the Early 90s they had attendance issues. The Lakers in the mid 90s (in between the Magic and Kobe Era) saw a drop in attendance as well.
Sure, it's a given that the better the team, the more people will want to come see the team. We know it's a positive factor but it's only part of the equation. There are several other factors. And I don't think the bay area is any more "fair weather" than any other sports town necessarily.
For what I can gather, as of now they are just RUMORS about a team in San francisco. The only thing is that the NASL comish wish there was a team, there is also a group of fans making the noise and gathering more fans around the cause by tweets and facebook, but still no group with the $$ willing to take the task. I wouldn't be surprised if by sometime next year this $$ group shows up !
Attendance often lags a year behind, so attendance would be expected to be good following a World Series winning season, or a playoff making season even. We'll see what happens with the Giants this year. If they have a slow start, I'd expect their attendance to be down from 2013. Probably not catastrophically lower, but lower. Performance is probably still most important. I'm certainly not denying that a new stadium helped, but AT&T Park isn't new anymore and I don't think it drives a ton of attendance currently. There are those people who like visiting ballparks when they visit places, so there will probably be some of that, but winning a World Series two out of three years probably has more to do with good recent attendance than a thirteen year old park. As for the Warriors, I don't know much about their situation. If they had consistently good crowds despite poor years, then first I'd like to know how consistent they were. It might be that the East Bay just loves basketball. Having a stadium for the Quakes is going to be a significant advantage in the opportunity to drive attendance. The overall point is that honeymoon period isn't going to last forever. Worrying about how your stadium compares to all other stadiums seems like a waste of effort and is more of a personal pride thing than a, hey, I really like watching live soccer thing.
Hi, we're starting to organize an effort to get an NASL club in San Francisco. Just figured I would pop by and mention it here to. We're just starting to organize things now but check out our website at www.NASL2SF.com and follow us on Twitter and Instagram and like us on Facebook. We've got some more news coming over the next few days. Thanks and appreciate the support in advance.