Good point, but I put more of the blame on the coaches. There're too many of them who instill in their teams a "protect the lead" or "play for the draw on the road" mindset.
I haven't seen quite as much cynicism this year. Maybe that's because there have been a few inept performances that have lead to blow-outs, but it's not like last year quite yet. Chivas certainly help, and despite the low score in their last game, you can't say RSL are going to try catennaccio...
Yes, but socring systems aren't immutable. What did you say about the 2/1/0 becoming the 3/1/0? Somebody had to take the lead on that. Why not us? That said, most of you guys looking to change the points system are on the wrong track. And for good reason. The 3/1/0 had a noticable effect, but a moderate one, and increading it runs into the rule of diminsihing returns. Going from a 2/1/0 to a 3/1/0 increases the rewards for playing to win by 50%. But going from there to a 4/1/0 only increases that reward 33%. It's effect should be smaller, and checking the standings from last season, almost nothing changes if you go to a 4/1/0 or even a 5/1/0. Further, giving a bonus for winning by a lot is even weaker, because it only rewards the team for scoring goals that is already scoring goals. Also, should we have a table that complicated? It's an open question, but a lot of folks don't like it. You should be thinking about it the other way, as in penalties for cynical play. A somewhat simpler points system than what vw suggested, and rewards teams for doing away with cynical play which is what we really want gone, would be the following: 3/1/0 -1 for getting shut out (applies to 0-0 draws, too). That way, 0-0 draws would get a team absolutely nothing, and performances like Colorado's against RSL would be absolute standings-killers. Look at it this way, if this system were in use so far this season, the hapless but attacking-oriented Chivas would have zero points instead of one. But Colorado would have negative one point. Meanwhile Dallas would have six and an enormous lead on them. Colorado would never go into the season with its current roster and style of play with such a system in place. You cannot play for a draw on the road, unless you've adopted a secret technique for drawing 1-1, and you can't ever mail a game in without being harsly punished. --------------- Now, there are lots of other ways you can work within the LotG and still produce more offensive play, but if you were going to do it with your points system, this would be the best way.
Chicago sells Flex Plans, which are 20-game vouchers for use on any game you wanted. My speculation is this attendance might have indeed been underreported because they're likely to count flex plans as 1.33 tickets for each game, when really they're not used that way. This game was probably a high cash-in game, as will the last few games be. Some of those mid-season games will probably get over-reported because of this. That seems to be what happened in the Cotton Bowl, at any rate.
You wonder if that's not actually Anschutz not wanting to undercut the Galaxy's prices by too much: Gals tickets were listed at TicketBastard at $20, $25, $30, $35, $50, $75, and $150. $50 would have gotten me lower-level sideline Chivas sells for $42, and $35 would have gotten me the lower-level corner seats Chivas sells for $29. So the Galaxy are charging an-arm-and-a-leg for tickets and, by and large, getting away with it. Perhaps Anschutz is not too keen on letting Vergara ever become a threat to that. But I think there are creative ways for Chivas to reduce prices that would not siphon off Galaxy fans: - Big discounts for ChivaSocio members - Big discounts for 4-packs (I note the Chivas tickets front-page lists indivdual game prices first. You can't even find that on the Gaklaxy's page. You have to go to TicketBastard. The Galaxy only seem interested in season tix). - Considering the corners part of the end-zones. These Galaxy stats are also relevant to Thomas's point about Metro Tickets. One figures the $20 the Gals are charging are about the most expensive 'cheap seat' you can get away with in MLS in 2005. If the Metro want decent attendance, and I suggest they do at least for political purposes even if it didn't maximize revenue, they should have charged no more than this figure. They should probably create another, lower, tier. You could probably do that for sections 135, 127, 107, and 115 (which I take to be the supporters' section--the group discount should still apply).