No doubt one factor is the relative priciness of Chivas' tickets. Chivas vs. Real Salt Lake walk-up ticket price: ..............................Chivas........RSL West side...................$50..........$32 East side......................42...........25 Corners........................29...........18 Endzone.......................19...........14 $40+/seat might be a reasonable price to ask for if you're offering quality soccer, but not when you're fielding a team with players like Matt Taylor as starters.
Colorado will continue to have low numbers . . . it is just not happening there now - KSE still learning how to sell MLS. The snow is a poor excuse (it did not snow that evening, and the temperature was not frigid at kick-off) . . . also, for all the number guessing about the league . . . unless there is a "true" sellout in the stadiums . . . you can count on management bumping attendance numbers up on average of 2,000 to 5,000 per game . . . and on special occasions . . . even more!
Wow. You can see where Vargara (sp?) might be trying to recoup the $15m "co-location" fee....I think its a mistake though. I'd think he could generate similar revenue at a lower price point... That IS expensive..
That would limit the number of games I'd go to. Especially to see a team that's playing like Chivas are so far.
Plus, to make a broad generalization, I would argue that the Chivas target demographic simply has less disposable income then most other fans in the league. That makes the $40 ticket even harder to afford. I feel like, Chivas should cut therir ticket prices by about 30-40%. Obviously the can't do that at this point, so expect some crazy promotions. Heck, the first season at the hdc the galaxy had several 3x1 deals. Chovas will discount even deeper. The other option is to bring in a few name players from Guadalara Chivas, to bring back some of the curiosity factor... Mike
MLS Attendance Comparison 2005 - Week 3 MLS Average attendance after 8.3% of the games played 1996 29462 1997 17407 1998 17091 1999 14222 2000 14225 2001 16566 2002 20774 2003 16386 2004 18040 2005 14401 MLS Median attendance after 3.1% of the games played 1996 26416 1997 14485 1998 14841 1999 14443 2000 12921 2001 16823 2002 15123 2003 17177 2004 18216 2005 12623 MLS Final attendance 1996 17406 1997 14619 1998 14312 1999 14282 2000 13756 2001 14962 2002 15821 2003 14898 2004 15549 2005 ? MLS Final Median Attendance 1996 15092 1997 12732 1998 11871 1999 12973 2000 12690 2001 13431 2002 14108 2003 13641 2004 13223 2005 ?
Even though the general concensus was tthat this week would have been better, the data above shows that we closed the gap a bit as we moved up on both mean and average while almost all other years went down Still a long ways to go and the cure all double headers will not affect this seasons average as much as most other seasons due to the total number of games being played. Next week could be pretty ugly but peaking at some advanced data for most other years shows that they also have nothing to brag about during this early season stretch either. Andy
Andy- I'm curious...if you add 6-8k walkup (my estimate what was lost with the bad weather in NY, and threatening storm in Colorado)...where do the numbers then stack-up?
Not to mention that at least some of that target demographic probably sends a portion of their disposable income back to family in Mexico. On the FSN broadcast, I think they were advertising $10 off for wearing a Mexican national team jersey to the Cinco de Mayo celebration game. That should attract a decent crowd. Nah- I imagine that it would be disastrous to make any moves that would have a perpceptible negative effect on the performance of the real Chivas .
The panic button brings 20 people to KC on April 30. I wouldn't be worried if I was just considering 3 weeks of games. I AM worried about this year's attendance (and anyone paying any attention to overall attendance patterns should be) because at this point every other year, attendance is higher than the final mean. What makes you confident that this year's attendance patterns will be different?
Adding 7k attendance moves this years average to 14,839. Of course you would also need to compensate for bad weather in years passed to make any sort of real judgement. Andy
While the numbers werent great this week, the one positive is that the lowest number was 12k. You can't say that many weeks. It seems like every week there is one 8k clunker. I was at the Metro game last night and I was surprised they only announced 12k. The one side was pretty full. I would have thought it was more like 15-16k. Salt Lake did great and looks like they will be very successful. Chicago was pretty bad for an opener in good weather but things should be fine there with the doubleheaders. That was the most disappointing number of the weekend. Columbus was low for them but a Friday night game not surprising. Chivas looks like they will be a work in progress. Its not going to be the instant success everyone thought it would be. I agree with others that those tickets are probably too expensive for their target audience. I think this applies to Metro also. Their cheapest ticket this year is 26 bucks. I dont see how you can charge prices like that for the quality of play MLS puts on the field. I've always felt they should have one section that is similar in price to bleacher seats in baseball. I wouldnt panic yet about attendance, I'm sure when all is said and done we will be in the 15k range again. Everybody better get their meds ready for next week, games in SJ, Dallas, New England, and Colorado. Yikes.
NE is away at DC next week. DC and LA should have solid attendance next week (27 at LA and 17 at DC sounds fair). The other three may be lucky to break 25,000 combined. Andy
Sorry about that. I meant to put Metro in their instead of NE. Even worse a Friday night game in the meadowlands after they only drew 12k on a Saturday night. Yikes. Bartender make mine a double.
As long as the cheapest walk-up is $26.00, Metro will not get alot of walk-ups. And they didn't. I know. I stood there watching the ticket windows pre-game. They are pricing themselves out of the market (never mind having zero trophies in ten years) Big fricking shock there I know. They won't even break 10k. And because it's an ESPN 8:00 game they can't even do a doubleheader of that and a showing of Game of Their Lives.
I totally agree with you about the price issue. I think this will really kill their walkup attendance this year especially from the hispanic crowd. I noticed how dead the windows were last night also. The problem is last year the low end ticket was 18 and then this year they raise it like 40%. That doesnt make any sense to me why you would raise prices for a bad team that has steadily been losing fans over the years. It gives people more of a reason not to go. The most disappointing aspect of league attendance this year has been the fact that I thought MLS might have a chance to break the 16k barrier with the 2 new teams coming in. Now it looks like we'll be lucky to break 15k.
andy, looking at those numbers you broke down, this year so far is almost a copycat of 2000. The worst attendance year in MLS history. Kind of scary.
I'll throw something else out there that we haven't mentioned yet - what about the state of flux some of the teams are finding themselves in? Logic would dictate that if you decide to sell your team four months before the season starts, those season ticket holders on the fence ... won't buy season tickets. Lamar's announcement here pretty much destroyed any momentum the team had in selling season tickets after winning the U.S. Open Cup and finishing second in the league. Until each team has a unique investor-operator, the league won't function as an efficient entity. That will bring needed stability to the league and security to the followers of each team. Right now HSG and AEG are trying to stem the bleeding, not grow the business. This is not an environment in which it is easy to create an product consumers will find attractive and stimulate demand. D.C. United and the Galaxy seem to be in relatively strong positions. The recipe for the rest of us is to increase the size of the supporter groups - like the Heart of America Soccer Foundation here in KC - and work with each team's front office to do some of the necessary work the investor-operators won't let their GM's do. If anybody has ideas, success stories, or support for other teams, let's get it out on the boards.
Is MLS really experiencing "slow and steady" growth? ONe of the things that I think is difficult about attendance discussions is that it's not always clear when progress is made. MLS attendances have gone down and up-- last year was an improvement, but only if measured against 2003 and not 2002. Obviously, there's a lot of factors at work that don't occur equally year to year (maybe the large number of higher quality friendlies in 2002?) So how to tell if we're really making progress? The thing is, looking at year to year numbers may actually be looking too frequently like measuring your weight in the morning and thinking you've lost weight over night. To try and see what would happen if you look at more than a year at a time, I looked at a three year trailing average of attendances (e.g. the 2004 average includes 2003 and 2002). The results aren't surprising: 1999-1997 14,404 2000-1998 14,117 2001-1999 14,333 2002-2000 14,846 2003-2001 15,237 2004-2002 15,423 So there is, in fact, an upward trend in attendance despite yearly fluctuations. The bad news: to continue this trend, we'll have to beat 2002-- the highest ever.
as much as I hate to say it. I think there is a real good chance of four <10k games next week. I wonder if that has ever happened in MLS history? we could see history in the making next weekend.
Yeah, but we could still average around 13k if the la derby sells out, even with the other 5 games averaging 10k (and DC will help). Let's wait a few more games before we all kill ourselves.
Curt Johnson has said that the Wizards were doing very well with season ticket renewals until, you guessed it, December 9.
In 2000: Code: Saturday, July 8 119 Los Angeles 5 at Miami 3 8,212 120 DC United 0 at Dallas 3 9,394 121 Columbus 1 at Chicago 3 10,879 122 MetroStars 1 at Kansas City 0 5,810 123 San Jose 1 at Colorado 0 7,520 This doesn't really count because it's a Wednesday, but this is why we don't have Wednesday games anymore: Code: Wednesday, August 16 157 MetroStars 3 at Tampa Bay 4 5,131 158 Colorado 0 at Los Angeles 1 5,187 159 Miami 0 at Columbus 2 16,192 160 Chicago 0 at Dallas 3 4,869 161 Kansas City 3 at San Jose 0 7,081 Unfortuntately, I can't easily check the attendances for 1999, where it was pretty bad as well.