2004 MLS Attendance

[Goodsport]

This attendance drop-off is definitely a league-wide phenomenon, and each team involved (KC, Dallas, Colorado and SJ) has at some point in the past been the lowest-drawing team in the league, while even teams that have traditionally drawn well like Chicago or the MetroStars have smaller-than-expected numbers.

I won't be such an a-hole as to proclaim that any of these teams need to be moved or contracted or whatever. Each market having an attendance problem now (i.e. basically, more than half the league) has its own unique problems and must be given time to overcome them. It's not like we have a choice anyway.

Besides, some of those teams already have soccer-specific stadiums coming, while others are working at it. The attendances and revenues will definitely increase once those eventually come. :cool:


-G

[mellon002]

Yeah but it won't look good when Soccer Saturday goes to Dallas to find not even a half of the stadium filled.

[bilfish]

Is there a reliable way to gauge year-over-year stats for MLS attendance?

I'm curious, because I looked through the Rapids attendance last year, and it seemed that there are too many factors affecting attendance for any one game to say why attendance was high or low.

Last week is a good example. Someone said attendance was bad except for KC — well, KC had their Break the Record night for attendance, practically giving away tickets whenever you bought toilet paper at the local store.

Every game seems to have issues affecting attendance:
day of week game's played on (Wed are bad)
Weather
Expected weather
Other sports playing that weekend
How well the team's playing
Overall league excitement
Opponent (the Freddy Factor)
Promotions (Rapids July 4 game draws 65,000, skewing all their averages)
Team has a stadium
Etc. etc. etc.

Year over year, I can't seem to find anything that looks like a reasonable pattern. Obviously, weather affects games, but you can't say "Weather is the reason attendance was down."

Does anyone know how MLS determines if it's been a good or bad week?

From a Rapids POV, it doesn't look good.

Cheers,

BilFish

[kenntomasch]

Is there a reliable way to gauge year-over-year stats for MLS attendance?

I'm curious, because I looked through the Rapids attendance last year, and it seemed that there are too many factors affecting attendance for any one game to say why attendance was high or low.

I agree with you. Since I partially created the monster (almost three years ago now), I'm partially to blame for the attention focused on the numbers. But the one thing that very few people besides yourself have ever brought up is that there is no "one number" that's good or bad, black or white. Almost everything has to be qualified.


Every game seems to have issues affecting attendance:
day of week game's played on (Wed are bad)
Weather
Expected weather
Other sports playing that weekend
How well the team's playing
Overall league excitement
Opponent (the Freddy Factor)
Promotions (Rapids July 4 game draws 65,000, skewing all their averages)
Team has a stadium
Etc. etc. etc.


You're right - just about every game can have one or more of the above things affecting it, as well as some others that I almost never hear expressed. And sometimes people just come up with voodoo explanations for things.


Year over year, I can't seem to find anything that looks like a reasonable pattern. Obviously, weather affects games, but you can't say "Weather is the reason attendance was down."

There is no one factor - sometimes there are many factors. And, while you'll hear that litany of excuses/explanations every week, I don't think anyone knows for sure how much of a % this way or that way to ascribe to any of them. Many times people just say "Well, the number seems low - which thing on the above list applies?"

It is human nature to try and draw a correlation between discrete events. Many times, I think people reach for whatever explanation is convenient, and don't look at other possibilities. At least, I never hear other possibilities expressed. It's almost always one of the ones on the list above.


Does anyone know how MLS determines if it's been a good or bad week?

I think they probably go by the numbers we don't have, which is revenue in versus expense out. I'm sure every team has revenue goals, and when they meet them, that's a good week. When they don't, that's a bad week.

I'm finally getting around to getting a complete list of doubleheaders and starting times and weather for all the games in MLS history. I think everyone wants everything factored out and stripped down to one basic number, and I'm not sure I can do that, but I think we'll find that a garden-variety MLS crowd, on your basic good day of the week in decent weather with a decent team in a decent market with a decent front office at a decent time will get you about 13,000-13,500 tickets sold. We have things like doubleheaders and promotions that skew that up a bit, and things like 3pm Saturday afternoon starts in Dallas that skew it down. But without doing all the math, I'm going to guess that's where we are. That doesn't give us much of a basis for comparisions with the other sports, because (a) I don't have the same data for other sports and (b) I'm not sure it would be a fair comparison, but people sure seem to like to compare MLS to other sports so they can feel better about themselves.

But the big deal is revenue in versus expense out, and we don't have those numbers. We can maybe guesstimate, but we don't have the numbers that really matter.

[numerista]

One question that might be interesting is whether the attendance gains of recent years are mainly the result of improved scheduling decisions, i.e. more Saturday nights, less other times.

Any thoughts on that one?

[kenntomasch]

Might be. It sure seems as though they've made a conscious effort over the years to get more weekend dates and as few weekday dates as possible.

Saturdays (I don't know about Saturday nights yet, I haven't collected all of that information) have gone from 31% of all games in 1996 to an all-time high of 75.3% in 2003. It has risen every year, unless some of my math is off somewhere. Overall, weekends (Saturday/Sunday) have gone up from 61% in 1996 to 83% last year.

I would imagine that accounts for a part of it, yes. I don't know exactly how much because we haven't taken everything else into account, but they've scheduled more weekend and, especially Saturday games in recent years, and I think that's a good thing.

[okcomputer]

I totally agree with you you guys on all the different factors that effect attendance. That is why whenever you hear executives in any league speak, they gauge everything on season ticket sales. The reason for that is with season ticket sales you already have the seat sold for the year and you don't have to worry about all of those external factors affecting your attendance numbers. I always thought the most interesting statistic to see in MLS is what are the teams season ticket sales and what is the rate of renewal. This is another reason why probably the second most important number is sponsorship dollars because again you have a set amount of revenue coming in before the season even starts and don't have to worry about external factors changing this amount of money.

[mellon002]

New England
at Columbus
16,694

Chicago
at MetroStars
17,211

Kansas City
at D.C. United
16,147

San Jose
at Dallas
8,498

Colorado
at Los Angeles
20,882

Much better week. LA continues their streak of home games over 20K in attendance. One disturbing trend is see how DC's attendance has dropped every week since opening day.

[bilfish]

I think the shine is somewhat off DC's leading face, but that's to be expected and they are still drawing very well.

They are coming to see the Rapids this next Saturday, and word is that sales are very strong.

Anecdotally, I would also say that the Adu name means something. My mother-in-law even mentioned knowing who he is, and family that would never get to a game are going. So, it's not simply a "I'll go to the Freddy game instead of another game." It's also "Maybe I'll see one of them soccer thingees this summer. Might be fun. If not, it's short, so that's okay too.

I like the idea of season ticket sales being a really good barometer of the health of the team. It's something that can be traced year-over-year, and it's certainly an idea of the depth of the hardcore audience as well as an idea of how many people feel comfortable saying, "I support soccer to the Nth degree."

Which begs the question: Can we get that info?

Cheers,

BilFish

[kenntomasch]

Only bits and pieces. I think Columbus has mentioned somewhere that they hold the record for season tickets. Kansas City announced their Full Season Equivalent number last year. Somewhere I have seen the numbers, but I don't think the data is anywhere near being complete.

[gherter]

One disturbing trend is see how DC's attendance has dropped every week since opening day.

DC plays LA at home in just a few days, which, I believe, is usually a very well attended game. I think the KC game might have been low given some people might be planning to come to the LA game, instead. The LA game is in mid-week, however, so hopefully it will still get a good crowd.

Still, the KC game had a good crowd, which helps the overall experience, I think. The seats in the end we mostly empty, but the good seats were all full. I just wish they would open up the upper deck for a few sections. I like sitting up high, and the mezzanine sections are only available in the corners and ends.

[mellon002]

I don't know about mid-week games. I'm not going to be able to make it to DC's game on Wednesday because I have to work. I think a lot of other people could have the same problem.

[mellon002]

Bump.

How do you upload stats from an Excel file? I had some time on my hands and I calculated all of the numbers into a speadsheet.

[kenntomasch]

I know you can attach images here, can you attach a spreadsheet?

I've already got one. It's very nice. Does everything automatically. :)

[NoSix]

Bump.

How do you upload stats from an Excel file? I had some time on my hands and I calculated all of the numbers into a speadsheet.

So long as your columns are all less than 10 characters wide, you can just cut and paste in between a "code" and "/code" command (with square brackets around them).

[kenntomasch]

Trying it....my spreadsheet spits out:


Team G Total Average
Chicago 7 98,126 14,018
Colorado 7 124,871 17,839
Columbus 7 105,022 15,003
Dallas 6 53,655 8,943
DC United 8 148,499 18,562
Kansas City 7 100,060 14,294
Los Angeles 9 203,285 22,587
MetroStars 7 132,861 18,980
New England 7 86,412 12,345
San Jose 7 75,163 10,738
MLS TOTAL 72 1,127,954 15,666

Month G Total Average
April 17 284,853 16,756
May 26 373,737 14,375
June 23 348,740 15,163
July 6 127,576 21,263
August 0 0
September 0 0
October 0 0
MLS TOTAL 72 1,134,906 15,763

Day G Total Average
Monday 0 0
Tuesday 0 0
Wednesday 6 102,398 17,066
Thursday 0 0
Friday 1 7,784 7,784
Saturday 58 906,394 15,627
Sunday 7 118,330 16,904
MLS TOTAL 72 1,134,906 15,763

Mon-Thu 6 102,398 17,066
Fri-Sun 66 1,032,508 15,644
MLS TOTAL 72 1,134,906 15,763

Mon-Fri 7 110,182 15,740
Sat-Sun 65 1,024,724 15,765
MLS TOTAL 72 1,134,906 15,763

Soccer Saturday 15 259,574 17,305

Week G Total Average
Week 1 5 97,699 19,540
Week 2 2 35,230 17,615
Week 3 5 83,549 16,710
Week 4 5 68,375 13,675
Week 5 5 83,980 16,796
Week 6 5 51,531 10,306
Week 7 5 79,432 15,886
Week 8 6 87,668 14,611
Week 9 5 71,126 14,225
Week 10 5 75,164 15,033
Week 11 6 88,266 14,711
Week 12 5 64,334 12,867
Week 13 6 79,873 13,312
Week 14 6 159,329 26,555
Week 15 1 9,350 9,350

[bilfish]

Ahem.

As for that Friday game, that was ours — the Rapids. Sorry 'bout that everyone, didn't mean to kill the average.

Great numbers, thanks for putting them together. I'm curious what popped out to you when you were putting them together.

The most obvious to me is that Wednesday evenings ain't that bad for footie!

And Dallas sucks and Colorado rocks. Of course, the Rapids just pulled in an embarrassing 42,000 for July 4th after 3 years of 60,000+ for the holiday. Ouch. And that's the only reason they even have 17K avg. attendance.

I'd definitely be interested to see if many of the gains in fans over the years are the results of increased efficiencies in finding gametimes more suitable to fans (more weekends, etc.). That might be a sign that MLS is actually maturing a bit more slowly than previously thought.

Also, of course, stadiums are the hot button for MLS, so I wonder what they really mean... I mean, L.A. drawing 22,500 average seems pathetic given that they have 12 Million people in the area, a lot more than any other team's geographic draw.

Cheers,

BilFish

[kenntomasch]

The most obvious to me is that Wednesday evenings ain't that bad for footie!

They're not bad when the Metros have a doubleheader that draws 40k+ on a Wednesday. Historically they do about 11k, I think.

[mellon002]

And Dallas sucks and Colorado rocks. Of course, the Rapids just pulled in an embarrassing 42,000 for July 4th after 3 years of 60,000+ for the holiday. Ouch. And that's the only reason they even have 17K avg. attendance.

I wonder if the Rapids 4th of July attendance suffered because Freddy came to town recently bringing in a big crowd. I think there were probably some fans who didn't want to see another game after coming to see Freddy.


Also, of course, stadiums are the hot button for MLS, so I wonder what they really mean... I mean, L.A. drawing 22,500 average seems pathetic given that they have 12 Million people in the area, a lot more than any other team's geographic draw.

Regardless, 22.5K is an impressive number when compared to other teams around the league. You gotta wonder how many Chivas USA will bring in. It's also going to be interesting to see if Dallas can fill their stadium next year.

One trend I've noticed this year and last year is that Columbus, LA, and DC are the only teams whose attendance does not drop below 10K for a single game. This is probably because Columbus and LA have their own stadiums and DC has Freddy. But like I said, the same is true for last year.

Thanks for keeping the number Kenn. It's pretty fun to put it in an Excel document and look at the charts. Kansas City's attendance is pretty sporatic.

[Andy_B]

It's also going to be interesting to see if Dallas can fill their stadium next year.

Wow, and here I was hoping that Dallas could lift their average to 13k in the new stadium.

I might be wrong, but expecting them to average 20k, nearly TRIPLING their attendance seems unrealistic.

Andy