The English women's league was proud of their record attendance today as Arsenal beat Brighton to clinch the season title: 5265 https://www.bbc.com/sport/live/football/48029645
I think it's great they were proud of their attendance record. Utah had 18,015 in their home opener. Chicago has over 12,000 in their home opener.
After yesterday's non-existent crowd, maybe aiming for 2,000 is more realistic. Or is that even too high?
I believe they're the first team outside Portland to draw over 15k (heck, over 10k) twice in a single year, and the first of the expansion team to see one of their second-game-of-the-season even moderately close to their inaugural attendance.
If, later in the season, Utah keeps it anywhere near close to their attendance so far this year, it's going to pose some really interesting questions. For one thing, it seems to me it will take away the argument that Portland's attendance isn't relevant because Portland's an outlier. Here are two questions I think will come up: 1. Both Portland and Utah have a history of having strongly supported women's college soccer before they had women's pro teams. Is that a possible clue to good NWSL team locations? If so, where else in the country has such a history? One answer to the latter question is the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill area. 2. What do Portland and Utah have in common that helps generate support for women's pro soccer? Where else in the country can you find that?
SLC also supports women’s sports in general, as the Utah Women’s Gymnastics team averaged 14,842 this year.
Wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that Utah is doing particularly well in this beginning of the league, so people are more excited. Actually, I can't remember well, but I seem to remember that, at the beginning of their inaugural season last year, they were just having a lot of draws.
(Relative) lack of competition from the "big four" leagues. That said, you'd expect Orlando to be doing better if that were the *only* factor, but they do still have the #1 NWSL attendance of all time. One thing Portland and Utah have that Orlando didn't was a longer history of USL/MLS before expanding to NWSL, so soccer culture was there, which isn't really the case in Orlando. I hope that Utah can keep up with the 15k+ attendances; I'm still expecting a regression to the mean, but maybe it'll be a much slower regression this year. We'll have to see. San Diego might be the best hotspot for NWSL that otherwise isn't very well served: #18 in the US/CAN by population and only the Padres to officially compete with. However, San Diego doesn't have MLS support at the moment, and they probably already are tied to the Chargers and Clippers a fair amount.
Side note, since I didn't talk about it above: I don't think anyone has suggested Portland's numbers aren't relevant. The issue is they've never been representative, and anyone looking to invest in the league probably would look at the other 7-9 teams (depending on what year it was) to judge what level of investment was "worth it". Utah coming in to match Portland on their year 2 would probably not be enough to move that needle as long as you have teams semi-regularly drawing under 3k. That said, a second team regularly drawing over 15k and "adding to the pot" for redistributing profits would certainly help at least a little bit, and if you truly can "find the formula" for regularly drawing over 8k or so, that would help too. But Portland (and maybe Utah) are still going to be viewed as the exception rather than the rule.
They were 0W-4D-1L in their first five games last year, including 0-1-1 in their first two home games, so yes they're doing MUCH better this year in comparison. In fact, you can almost directly map their attendances last year based on results: Opener: 19k+ (2pts overall coming in, L) Home2: down to 8.4k (3pts in, D) Home3: down to 7.5k (4pts in, W) Home4: WED 7.1k (7pts in, D) Home5: up to 8.3k (8pts in, W) Home6: WED 8.5k (17pts in, D) Home7: hold 8.4k (18pts in, W) Home8: up to 8.7k (21pts in, L) Home9: down to 8.5k (21pts in, D) Home10: WED 8.1k (25pts in, W) Home11: up to 8.7k (28pts in, L) Closer: up to 11.8k (32pts in, W) In other words, their attendance almost always went up if their previous home game was a W, and tended to go down otherwise (with a little bit of fudging around Wednesday games). Granted, we're talking about fluctuations on the order of 100-600, so less than 10% at most.
1) Even Mormons don't use the term "Mormon" anymore. 2) Why do some of you put the bulk of the credit on team results and demographics and barely (seemingly) on the efforts of a front office to actually sell? If you are going to look to replicate what Portland and Utah do, would you ask what markets you could get that are like those or what ownership and leadership you could get that are like theirs? Obviously you aren't going to put an NWSL team in Dubuque or Green Bay, but I would take my chances with a smart, savvy, experienced front office team in any representative-size market before I would take, say, the yahoos running Sky Blue FC. By the same token, when Andy Crossley ran the Breakers, they did a far sight better than when others were running them. Attendance is not like the weather. It doesn't just HAPPEN to you. Only half the teams in any given league can do well at the expense of the other half, so you cannot rely on team performance alone to sell tickets. And human communities are not monolithic. Even if you tally up what you think are the characteristics of the people in a given market that make them more or less likely to attend NWSL games, that does not mean another market with those types of people will draw like that or another market without them won't. There are no supernatural explanations for attendance, any more than it's random that Cogswell Cogs outsells Spacely Sprockets. You try and sell. Team, stars and markets factor in. But some of you seem to utterly ignore the efforts of the people charged with actually building crowds.
Because larger forces such as demographics often outweigh the marketing efforts of a team. You mention Andy Crossley, a great guy, but was he able to get 10,000 fans to see the Breakers even in a sports-obsessed city like Boston? Not close. Are you denigrating the efforts and dedication of Arnim with his Chicago Red Stars? Or Peter Wilt, their first GM? Are trying to tell us MLS hasn't been concerned with demographics in determining where to expand to the last 20 years? That they're primarily concerned with evaluating marketing departments and sales managers?
Well clearly just getting what markets you can get like them doesn’t work, because Orlando hasn’t had the same success. But why haven’t they? Is it really due just to poor ownership and leadership? Their MLS team has excellent attendance. Do they not do any marketing for that team? It seemed, after their first game, that they had put a great deal of effort into marketing the Pride but then attendance just dried up. Why is that? That’s why I think people are looking for other explanations such as support for women’s college soccer.
There's market size and then there are market characteristics. I don't consider Orlando to have anything like the market characteristics of Portland or the Salt Lake area. I think more along the lines of Austin, TX, and, as I've said previously, the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area. I wonder -- maybe very big "towns" (as distinguished from big cosmopolitan cities) with a progressive elitist edge. I don't know enough about US cities' cultures to pick out potential candidates that would meet that description. But, I also think kenntomasch is right: ownership and leadership are critical -- too.
College women's soccer attendance has been the best demographic predictor for successful NWSL franchises but since there really aren't any significant college women's hotbeds - unless you count College Station/ Texas A&M) - that isn't a mine you can keep tapping into. Even North Carolina, for all their success on-field, has never had great attendance. I've thought cities Portland-size or smaller give you a better chance. Cities that aren't saturated with the traditional four major-league men's sports give you a better chance. (Portland and Salt Lake City have basketball only, right?) Cities with lots of soccer fans generally and fans of MLS in particular helps. That's just about everywhere now, though, isn't it? (But how's the Houston Dynamo doing? Is Houston just not a soccer town? Chicago's not much of a proven soccer town either and neither was Boston) Orlando only has one of the traditional four (right? just basketball?) and their men's soccer team is doing fine (yes?) - and they got good opening-day attendance. Maybe something about their marketing is off. But since they can at least get the occasional big crowd, there seems to be fair hope for Orlando to become a 3rd major attendance leader. Maybe they can benefit from a World Cup bump if Alex Morgan does well. It would be great to get one or two more Portlands or Salt Lake Citys but there's no good reason to think we can get a league full of them - or even half a league of them - right away, barring an unpredictable explosion of interest, which a fantastic World Cup could bring. NWSL is doing well to have teams like Seattle and North Carolina bringing in 4000-5000 per game. It would be great to have Washington Spirit doing that again - but there's a case where they need to build a better team (I knew Jim Gabarra just wasn't a very good coach)
Chicago weather has been terrible over the last month. Constant rain, cold, etc. Even the Fire attendance is horrible. The Red Stars put a LOT of effort in marketing and getting people through the gate. But who wants to go to a game when it's 40 degrees and drizzling. Heck the White Sox attendance sucks. Cubs will always draw because Wrigley is the "Worlds Biggest beer Garden". Chicago has a GREAT owner and Chicago is a GREAT sports town. Red Stars have a very good base of fans, just need to get the casual out there on game day. Heck, yesterday, I was even thinking about not going cause the weather just sucked and it has been sucking for quite a while now.
Chicago's not much of a soccer town? Are you kidding? With it's huge Mexican, Polish, German, Italian, etc., neighborhoods with hundreds of Club teams in Chicago and surrounding areas? Just because they don't care about the Fire does not mean it is not a soccer town. Just the opposite.
Well, since this IS the attendance thread.... how about some numbers? NJ - 1330. Not great at all. Almost feels like more people were coming when there was off-field turmoil. (Is there an affinity for trainwrecks in NJ? It would explain "Jersey Shore".) UTA - 10138. It's a fairly noticeable drop from their previous two home game this year, but things are still looking up in Sandy - with only three games in the books this year, UTA's "top three attendances" total is already well above the "top three attendances" total from last year. ORL - 4369. Not great, lowest of the year so far, but not bad either (assuming it doesn't keep falling) compared to the bulk of last year. CHI - 2113. Need to get more people to come - this is almost as low as last year's lowest number. I've mentioned it before, and it was kinda hinted at in MRAD's posts above, but there's an inertia of "minor-league feeling" in CHI that's hard to overcome, for both the Red Stars and the Fire.
The only real soccer fan I know of in Chicago is you, MRAD12 Of course, I'm writing from a women's soccer perspective, but, seriously, who cares about Mexicans, Poles, etc who are a bunch of poser-Premier League bandwagon fans - or Serie A or the Mexican League - and don't support a men or women's team in their city? Those types are everywhere. What good do they do as far as what we're concerned with? Chicago is NOT a soccer town. I give a lot of credit to Arnim for keeping the Red Star going (and for Peter Wilt for getting them started) in what is NOT A SOCCER TOWN.
I am not really sold on the Austin market and am a bit perplexed that the MLS awarded a franchise to them. In fact, I am not sold on the fact that the state of Texas is a good market for either men or women's teams. If you look at the two existing teams Houston Dynamo(14,922) and FC Dallas(14,465), both are in the bottom half of the MLS in attendance this season, 18th and 19th out of 24 teams. And with the USL team the Austin Bold averaging 2813(last game 1804) so far this season, leaves a lot to said about that market. And while Texas A&M was able to average 2565 this last season, University of Texas drew only 1170. Considering that even with the success of the A&M program, and only a hour and a half away from the Houston area, doesn't seem to be doing the Dash much good. Ironically, maybe the only place for soccer in Texas, is just down the road from Austin. The USL San Antonio team, who has been slighted somehow in all this in their attempt to secure an MLS franchise is averaging 6461 a game. Last season it was just under 7000.
For CRS yesterday, the fact it was Mother's Day and the weather (under 50 and rainy, cold, damp) contributed to the attendance ; the points made above by SiberianThunderT are valid, too.
Austin, thanks to the Univ of Texas and being the seat of the state government (and subsequently home to tech companies), is a relatively cosmopolitan city. Whether it winds up being a great MLS franchise, I don't know, but I'm glad we get to find out! I think a key lesson is that there aren't 10 or 12 places in America that are going to support women's soccer the way Portland and Salt Lake City have so far. Even when affiliated with a MLS club. And that's okay for now. Women's soccer isn't going away but, for now, to have a league, you need the Predmores and the Arnims in places like Seattle (OK, Tacoma) and Chicago