31% means how many? How can you judge the numbers by noise level? They can put the speaker near 20 loud kids and you'd think there were hundreds or a thousand.
Do you not know math? 7000*.312=~2186 (rounding errors lowers it to 2814). Which is what you said was actually there 4186-2000=2186. Because they don't. They use microphones pointed at the field. They look like this:
No guessing needed. My very first response said: "4186 is only 59.8% full." So x*.598=4186. So x = 4186/.598 and you get x=7000. So 7000 is full.
Who cares to do all of that math? In fact who cares to put your posts together and then do all of the math? Too much trouble. And then in the end your numbers are still wrong.
People in this thread. Look at all the posts about averages and medians. That's all math. You don't have to put any posts together. It was all in that first post. Well, if my calculator is faulty, I will have to take it up with Texas Instruments...
We know some people think Houston's numbers are and have been inflated. No-one needs to get poisonous if people disagree. Besides, it doesn't matter - bogus or not, that's what was announced, and it doesn't change how much money Houston actually saw in ticket sales for this game. Now, let's get back to what the numbers are saying, yes? I still haven't seen an official number on NWSL's main site for Rochester, but I'll go with the 1,837 suggested earlier. The suggested 2,703 from Seattle's announcer has been confirmed. We've tanked quite a bit from my last summary: Total: 69,773 Average: 4,360.8 Std. Dev.: 3,964.1 Median: 2,554.0 For a comparison, check out the first two weeks versus the second two weeks: Total: 51,923 // 17,850 Average: 6,490.4 // 2,231.3 Std. Dev.: 4,720.1 // 1,010.98 Median: 5,074.0 // 2,251.5 Clearly, the main driver of the difference is the presence/lack of Portland games, but massive drops in Chicago, KC, and NJ between the first two weeks and the second two weeks are also a problem.
If you didn't use the term poisonous about me, I apolozize. On the other hand, I only speak the truth. If you or someone else rather bury your head in the sand, that's just too bad and not my problem.
Now that every team has played at least 1 home game, I'm bringing back my per number of games played comparison: TeamGames2014 Total2014 Average2015 Total2015 AverageAvg DifferencePercent Change Boston Breakers12018201823762376+358+17.7% Chicago Red Stars*34311143759061969+532+37% FC Kansas City247862393109555478+3085+128.9% Houston Dash2132956648101985099-1549-23.3% Portland Thorns228252141262653413267-859-6.1% Seattle Reign24775238853452673+285+11.9% Sky Blue FC23565178324951248-535-30% Washington Spirit12306230641364136+1830+79.4% WNY Flash13674367418371837-1837-50% Total16669824186697824361+175+4.2% The good news is despite a couple teams dropping a lot, overall the league is still a little ahead of where it was last year. Though that is mostly because of FCKC's huge numbers for their season opener. (* this is of course ignoring the Red Stars doubleheader last year)
I think this would be a normal trend in most sports leagues. Higher totals for the home openers, then a lull in attendance until week 7 or 8, then it picks up again in mid-season and continues to grow for teams going to the playoffs and plateaus or tails off for the non-playoff teams. I remember from last year you and Holden are good at trend analysis. Have you noticed this pattern from other seasons?
This Chicago Fire's match report of their game vs RSL lists 16,017 as the attendance there; TBD if the Red Stars quote that number as well.
I don't know what they will quote but I would say about 7,000 stayed for the Red Stars game. And BTW, I don't know if that 16,017 was tickets sold, but there were not 16,000+ at the Fire game at Toyota Park today, in my opinion from where I sat. There were many, many empty seats everywhere. It was cold and rained all last night in Chicago. I'm thinking many stayed home. I was actually surprised that many people stayed for the Red stars game as cold as it was today.
1562 in Jersey tonight. I thought it was probably more than that but maybe it was the atmosphere. I know many are saying that SBFC should leave Yurcak because it's not working anymore but I'm off the opinion that if they move this team to any other location they will have the same issues. The team is just BORING. You could tell the fans where looking for a reason to get excited but was not getting any. If Sky Blue played with a bit more energy or show that they have passion out there, the fans will come. What they wouldn't give for a character like Kai right now. I know Nadim have a similar personality as Kai did but it seems even she is getting sucked into the black hole.
I bet it's a bit of the chicken-and-egg thing going on here - more fans will come if the players give more energy, but the players can only give as much energy as they get from the fans, and thus need more fans to give more energy.
The crowd that were out there tonight was pretty energetic and you don't need 4k-5k fan for that. You can have a good atmosphere with 2k - 3k fans. Also, SBFC used to have good attendance in WPS and the early days of NWSL but have fallen off so I don't blame the fans when the team can't give them anything to be exited about. As we saw with Seattle last year, when you start winning and playing exiting football, people will come.
14,236 was what they announced at the game, so it must be right. Just from looking at the crowd, I thought it was their top attendance so far this year, and I was right.
Portland's 14,236 confirmed on NWSL site, so here are the updated attendance numbers after the first 20 games (2/9 through the season already!!) Total: 103,390 Average: 5,169.5 Std. Dev.: 4,975.7 Median: 2,554.0 So the median didn't change, but the Portland and Chicago games quite inflated the other three metrics. Just for comparison, here are the numbers if you discount all of Portland's games and Chicago's double-header: Total: 46,603 Average: 2,912.7 Std. Dev.: 1,964.1 Median: 2,367.5
Here's a different look at the attendance numbers in the NWSL that measures attendance as a percentage of the population of the area where the teams are located. As you'd expect, the numbers are small - lot of zeros! - for instance (.0005) in Boston and Washington's case, (.0003) in Chicago's. To make the numbers more readable, I put them in the table as a fraction of 1%, so that (.0003) is shown as (.03), that is (.03) of 1% (or 3% of 1%) pop. Rank pop. 2014 (est.) 2014 avg attendance fraction of 1% 3 Chicago 9,554,598 2949 0.03 5 Houston 6,490,180 4650 0.07 7 Washington 6,833,737 3335 0.05 10 Boston 4,732,161 2437 0.05 15 Seattle 3,671,478 3666 0.10 24 Portland 2,348,247 13362 0.57 29 Kansas City 2,071,133 2018 0.10 51 (WNY) Rochester 1,083,393 3177 0.29 (Sky Blue) Middlesex County 836,297 1656 0.20 (population based on MSA - Metropolitan Statistical Area) There are several caveats and qualifiers but I think some interesting things stand out. Western New York's attendance has been cut in half so far this year but as a percentage of area population, it's way ahead of all teams except (of course) Portland and (surprisingly) Sky Blue -- but in Sky Blue's case I didn't know what population figure to use so I just used the county population. This table may have relevance in the Future Expansion thread. Are the discussed areas large enough to support an expansion team? What percentage of population is reasonable to expect? *** notes: 1) I used the mean average for attendance, median might be a better indicator. 2) for population, where I could (everywhere except Sky Blue), I used the Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) as calculated by the US Government (Office of Management and Budget). Estimate 2014. Source: Wikipedia page on Metropolitan Statistical Area
Very interesting work, Kolabear. I wonder how the dispersals of specific population groups that might have high proportions of potential women's soccer fans (e.g., those with bachelors degrees or better; those with higher household incomes) and the locations of stadiums within the MSAs might relate to attendance.
Yes, those things are important. Even from such relatively raw information as this, though, I noticed a few things. The percentage in very large metropolitan areas is on low end, which makes sense, I think, because you almost have people living in different cities where one part of town may often have little in common with the opposite end. Traffic and travel time become burdensome as well. What is an acceptable number? Washington's (.05) of 1% seems okay at least for the current sustainability of this version of the league. (I didn't realize how many people lived in the greater D.C. area, by the way) Looking at areas outside the mega-metropolis category, the number (.10) of 1% seems like an important target. That's 1/10th of one percent. Think of an area with 1 million people. That's saying the average attendance would be 1,000 people. The league has to try to do better than that. So if it looks to expand in cities with that population level it has to expect to get noticeably better market penetration than that. Is it realistic? Rochester reached (.29) of 1% in 2014. So far this year the attendance is about half. But it shows that even in an off-year, they're over the (.10) threshold. KC sunk to the (.10) level last year but attendance is back up so far this year. So, again, in the right area, we can hope to reach a level of penetration more like (.20) of 1% What's a dream-like result? Of course, Portland, which is over 1/2 of 1%. That's great if any other team, new or existing, can reach those levels but of course no one should be going in expecting that. Salt Lake City is often mentioned as a possible expansion site. Its population is about that of Rochester's. So for it to reach average attendance of 3000, it would need to attract a rate close to (.30) of 1%, or very roughly half the rate of Portland. No one else, so far, is coming close to that. (Not counting Sky Blue because I don't know what's the relevant population figure to use for them) *** add - One conclusion I think to draw is that the league needs to be looking at areas with at least 1 million people. Even then, unless that team gets Portland-like levels of devotion, you're going to be looking at a maximum average attendance of around 3000. Good enough for now but perhaps not helping take the league to the next level. (at least from a raw attendance standpoint) add emphasis - Looked at this way, Rochester's average of 3000+ last year is quite impressive.
That's not what I'd call it. Was their WPS attendance better than they get now? Yes. Was their attendance good in comparison to other WPS teams? No. They were mid pack in 2010, but worst in 2009 and 2nd worst in 2011 (when MagicJack came in last, though their stadium only seated 1200...). And every season has been lower than the season before it.