MLS Attendance Comparison Final MLS Average Attendance 1996 17,406 1997 14,619 1998 14,312 1999 14,282 2000 13,756 2001 14,962 2002 15,821 2003 14,898 2004 15,549 2005 15,108 2006 15,504 2007 16,770 Final MLS Median Attendance 1996 15,093 1997 12,733 1998 11,871 1999 12,973 2000 12,690 2001 13,431 2002 14,108 2003 13,641 2004 13,285 2005 12,619 2006 14,175 2007 15,353 % of games Under 10,000 after all games complete 1996 21.9% 1997 25.0% 1998 26.6% 1999 32.3% 2000 34.4% 2001 26.6% 2002 17.1% 2003 23.3% 2004 24.7% 2005 27.1% 2006 18.8% 2007 8.2% % of games Over 20,000 after all games complete 1996 26.3% 1997 16.3% 1998 161% 1999 15.1% 2000 12.5% 2001 17.7% 2002 18.6% 2003 18.0% 2004 25.3% 2005 17.7% 2006 18.8% 2007 29.7% I am willing to call this best best year ever. Who is with me? And MLSnet has now fixed the attendance stats. MLSnet's final average now matches mine for the first time in long time. Andy
Investors have been lining up to talk to the Don. But this is the best year ever, thanks to the Blanco Rule.
the DP's (their attendance draws), a new team in Toronto, and some other things all helped this year's attendance for the league. will anyone be doing a "playoff attendance" tracker?
Wow. As a long time attendance watcher, I have to say that this season exceeded by optimistic expectations. Yes best season ever... attendance wise. Next year will be interesting. We should continue to see good things out of LA, Toronto, Chicago, Houston, and DC. Salt Lake gets the new stadium, but their attendance has been always been good. Dallas and Colorado should hold steady. Hopefully we will see some residula effects in New England and New Jersey. The big question marks in my opinion are Chivas with their poor year attendance wise, Columbus with another lackluster season under their belts and no apparent help in sight, and then SJ and KC playing in smaller stadiums with an unsettled future home situation. So attendance could go down abit, but I don't think by much. In the end we are looking good.
I definitely would call it the best year ever as far as attendance. I really feel confident that this year was one of the least padding attendance number years also. I am usually one of the ones on BS crying about the fake attendance numbers, but I personally only saw 2 or 3 games the whole year that looked like they announced padded numbers (I watch almost every game live or highlights). That is the biggest improvement that I have seen this year. When you know the capacity of the stadium it is very easy to eyeball it and get a very rough idea of how many are at the game. Not only do I think the teams didn't pad their numbers, but that means that people with tickets are actually going to the games, which hasn't always been true in past seasons. I am very optimistic after this season.
The most telling stat is % of games under 10k and % of games over 20k they both changed for the better
I'd like to also see a team-by-team breakdown of attendance. Chicago especially impressed me this year with their attendance ever since bringing Blanco on board. They have found a recipe for success in the turnstiles. Rather than brand yourselves as a second-rate version of a popular Mexican club, how about sign a real life Mexican star? That seems to work better. And even though Blanco won't be around for the long haul, as he's near the end of his career, the seeds of loyalty towards the Fire are being gradually sewn. That's one of the rules of making the sale, is first you have to get them in the seats before you can woo them over to your brand. They get excited about the game and the atmosphere and want to come back for more. I didn't get to see that Galaxy-Fire game yesterday, because I don't get Telefutura, but watching it on replays, boy, it sure got me excited about the state of MLS today.
Best Season YET!! With Beckham around all next year (here's hoping to no injuries) we might see a continuation of high attendence for all those still waiting to see him. Plus we might see some more intelligent signings like Blanco (not like Denilson). With new stadiums and new teams coming i'm excited about our present not just our future!! Ps. Do we have numbers on total attendence? I know # of teams and # of games has slowly changed. We'll also need to think about this over the next couple of years as we add more teams.
Plenty of investors want in - as Lew Wolff said, MLS is a good investment because "the worst case scenario isn't that bad, and the best case scenario is an unknown." The key now is to get the politicians on board in a few select markets - paging Mayor Fenty, paging Mayor Fenty...
Well done Andy. Thanks for doing this all year. Can't wait to see how we do in the playoffs and how we follow up next year.
MLS does not have a lot of data to support your contention. While I hope the Fire will see an upturn in attendance after Blanco leaves, Hernandez did not have a similar effect.
Great numbers! Thanks for tracking these all season long. Yes, this has been the best season ever for MLS attendance!
Ask, and you shall receive. Knock, and the door shall be opened to you. Ranked by percent change in average announced attendance from 2006 to 2007: Team..G......Total....Avg.....2006...Change..Median NER...15....251,812..16,787..11,786..42.4%..15,289 COL...15....221,229..14,749..12,056..22.3%..14,577 CHI...15....247,356..16,490..14,111..16.9%..18,453 LAG...15....363,782..24,252..20,814..16.5%..24,333 DCU...15....314,506..20,967..18,215..15.1%..18,918 COL...15....228,451..15,230..13,294..14.6%..13,572 NYR...15....247,948..16,530..14,570..13.5%..13,219 KCW...15....173,784..11,586..11,083...4.5%..10,141 FCD...15....227,182..15,145..14,982...1.1%..15,059 TFC...15....301,947..20,130...N/A.....N/A...20,156 RSL...15....239,395..15,960..16,366..-2.5%..14,789 HOU...15....238,240..15,883..18,935.-16.1%..14,351 CHV...15....214,578..14,305..19,840.-27.9%..11,253 MLS..195..3,270,210..16,770..15,504...8.2%..15,353 A gain of 8.2% in leaguewide average announced attendance is the highest since the 8.8% jump from 2000 to 2001. Also, without getting into in-depth analysis, here's one indicator of the Beckham Effect: Timeframe.......G....Total....Average Pre-Beckham...116..1,729,055..14,906 Post-Beckham...79..1,541,155..19,508 MLS TOTAL.....195..3,270,210..16,770 That's a big effect. The league was doing well before that, but leveraging of tickets to Galaxy road games into season tickets and mini-plans seems to have had a bit of a Secondary Beckham Effect (a ripple effect). I do think that this was hugely positive year for the league, regardless of Beckham's influence. Toronto was a great addition. New England made great strides. The new stadium in Colorado helped them a bunch, Blanco helped Chicago a bunch (apparently - home and road). Houston's "drop" is probably more due to the lack of a game at Reliant and the inevitable novelty wearing off. DC has long been a stalwart MLS market in terms of attendance, but they did a really great job this year (look at their last three games: 25,174 - 25,404 - 23,149). You DC folks tell me - was that return business (forced or unforced) from the Beckham game? In any case, they've done very well. Here's what concerns me about the playoffs, now that I've seen the schedule: Chicago, though they've had playoff tickets "on sale" for a bit now, didn't actually announce until last night they were playing at home on Thursday. That's three days from now. They'll have to scramble to get folks there and hope for the best, I think. DC will have a little more time, but their home game is on Thursday as well. And one of the two conference title games will be on Thursday (this a consequence of the ESPN2 deal). I don't particularly expect KC or Chivas to draw particularly well for their home playoff games (Chivas was all set to have a Blanco return before John Thorrington found the net), nor do I think New York will do particularly well. One of the things of this playoff format that had really helped attendance was giving teams time to sell and decent dates (this format led to much better crowds than the old first-to-five or the best-of-three did). The Thursday night thing kind of hurts that a bit. Hopefully there's enough momentum to help out. Last year's pre-MLS Cup playoff average announced attendance: 14,455. There's your number to shoot for.
Oh, and Dallas-Houston second leg is on a Friday night? Ouch. Because nothing else happens in Texas on a Friday night.
I agree here, especially the % of games under 10K. I know it's just an arbitrary number, but when a game draws only 7K, 8K, or even 9999, it just doesn't come across as major league. Oh, and great job all season, Andy.