HOT TAKE: I’ll be honest, speaking only as a die-hard whose tickets are in Nordecke, I’m not thrilled about a 17,931 attendance (90% filled). I don’t mean to be a hard ass about it but our fans, business community, and city and state government moved mountains to keep our beloved club here. Attendance just has to get better, plain and simple. HOWEVER, as reluctant as I am to say this… it is becoming apparent to me that some fans still need to be won back in to the fanbase. The clubs new owners have finally contracted a respectable TV partnership after years of neglect. The new owners are also advertising on TV, radio, social media, billboards for the first time in years as well. I, personally, am not exactly patient but I’m recognizing that there is still work to be done. It’s why I and others continue to volunteer with #SaveTheCrew even after the Crew has indeed been “saved” and are staying put. Moving forward though there can be no excuses for the following reasons… The weather will be getting warmer, wear your coat until then and cheer! There are no more CBJ games that will conflict with the Crew until October, be here! Coach Porter has a fantastic track record of high-scoring teams and winning championships, you won’t want to miss the greatness! So until we sell out all our games and 100% attendance is the norm we have to recruit new fans to #FillTheFre. Because when our new stadium is ready in 2021 it M-U-S-T be filled, end of story.
I’ve been saying for a while that the home opener and playoffs should always sell out and I stand by that. I do think the attendance for our current opener was great when compred to history. What I will say is that it feels like this stupid league is turning into Major League Attendance and it’s all other fans seem to care about versus on-field results. How many other teams in the league actually sell out every game? The answer is not many. The inferiority complex of soccer fans in the US really shines through when it comes to attendance. Hell, other sports much bigger than soccer have teams that don’t sell out every game. It’s just getting very annoying to the point where it feels like all anyone seems to care about his attendance rather the actual game.
Great rant but I disagree. MLS needs to earn fans from Columbus. No one is obligated to attend the game especially after the nonsense the league attempted. This has always been a great market but MLS chose to crap all over it multiple times. It seems the only mountain that needs moved is the almost quarter century pile of shit MLS has built in Columbus. It's their own fault if fans have abandoned them. We can hope things are getting better but the new TV schedule says we are still bottom feeders. Columbus deserves more than MLS can offer at this point.
Absolutely. The inferiority complex is real and extremely frustrating, especially in Columbus. The Crew could win every game 5-0, win the treble, and cure cancer but there is a Slice of the Core Fanbase™ (both in Columbus and elsewhere) that would make the argument that because we only averaged 18.5k for the season it doesn't matter. I want to see attractive, successful soccer as much as anyone but at some point a person needs to realize - and admit to themself - that selling out every match is as common as going undefeated, especially in a small market.
If these boards become a home for "takes" - either hot, cold, or otherwise - I'll delete the bookmark and never return.
We'd all love for the stadium to sellout every week. Especially those of us that have season tickets, as we won't have to worry about buying scarce or scalped tickets each week. It's just not the reality we live in at the moment. Twenty years of neglect isn't overcome over night. Our love for St. Lamar and what he did to get this team off to a good start will never be forgotten. But he was never part of this community. He did a lot for the community but as an outsider. His sons were no better. They were absentee owners that did a smidgen above the bare minimum after building the stadium. What we need to see from the new owners is a plan and improvement. We've likely seen a 60% year over year increase in season tickets. Going from 6Kish to 10Kish. Or, say a 15% boost over PSV's best year. That's not anything to sneer at. If we don't sell a single extra ticket all year we'll have the same average as we did last year. That's a pretty great foundation from which to build. I feel that the new owners, just by showing up every week are going to be making a difference. If it matters to Dr. Pete and Ms Dee, it will start to matter to Columbus as a whole. Their presence and enthusiasm will trickle down to the other city VIPs, media etc. It was GREAT to see the south west corner with tents, propane fire heaters and lots of PEOPLE. The front office hosted people and seem to have gone all out to make sure the people they hosted were well taken care of. That means something (a lot better than splitting the check up when you invite folks to an expensive dinning event right @GoCrew1996 ? ) The goal this year has to be to show those 10K season ticket holders that we are cared for so that we all renew for 2020. To convert a couple thousand 3-5 game attendees into 10 or full season ticket holders. To build a bigger group of 3-5 game attendees. Finally to get 20 or 30 thousand folks to give the Crew a first look or a return after many years away. I think given that they've only had 2 months to get to this point that they've done a remarkable job and that we'll have plenty to be happy about how they put the plan together to be successful long term. As @Bill Archer said around here, there are no refunds. They're in for $650,000,000. They wrote a check to this dastardly league for $150,000,000. They have no intention of losing long term. tl;dr: It won't happen overnight, but the new owners will make this work.
All I need/want is for us to be competitive and perform at home, grab a few road results and be in the hunt for playoffs near the end giving me a reason to be excited in September. I don’t feel its asking much for a small market in a parity league. Most teams get in the playoffs and I expect that as well however I am a sports fan and realize we will have down years. As for attendance....averaging above 17k would be great imo. We are an mls original and the new car smell was gone a long time ago. Come talk to me in 10 years after cinci, atl and others have time to get used to the league, some losing seasons and maybe even a few ownership changes.
My guess for attendance was around 16k. I think 17900 or whatever it is, is a great number considering how this markets been sh*t on and driven plenty of people away. Add on the frigid temperature and other events going on and it's even more impressive. I knew there was going to be people who would say "I cant believe they didn't sell out after all the hell they went through and subsequently achieved. " I'm not sure who they think were supposed to fill the stands with. We need NEW fans to do that and the new owners have had an extremely limited amount of time to work on this. Theyve been doing everything right so far though. The big attendance growth will happen as the hype continues into summer and especially if the teams good. Then within the next year or so...well sign a high profile player or two to get excited about all the while coming up with new thoughtful marketing plans and community works and promotions. Incremental steps hyping up to the opening of the new stadium.
My oldest is 16 and we've started having the discussions about college. Is it wrong to encourage his interest in Ohio State? "Hey dear wife, what do you say we go down to Columbus to visit the boy this weekend? Oh look, the Crew just happen to be playing at home too. What do you say we catch the game while we're down there?"
There's a lot of truth to that, but the biggest blame needs to go with former owner/operators from previous years. After Lamar Hunt passed away his kids couldn't have cared less about the club and Anthony Precourt...well, you know the story there. We've heard about MLS 1.0, 2.0, and now with Atlanta the commissioner calls or MLS 4.0 with glitzy stadiums and massive crowds. The Crew is still operating on 2.0 at best. I'm hoping that once new ownership brings this club in to the new era more fans will follow and attendance will never again be an issue.
I think cold weather teams should play mostly away games to start the season which means more home games for teams in California, Texas , Florida etc... If attendance matters to MLS they should make a much better schedule. I think starting the playoffs earlier was a very good first step . You can not avoid cold weather but you can certainly limit it until one day when everyone can just close a retractable roof and play on grass . That’s maybe 100 years away from happening. So just schedule strategically to get the best results overall with all teams considered.
That would make sense, but instead we'll play 6 home games before the end of April and only 6 home games after July 1st.
My understanding was it was a degenerative condition. Is that all "cured", or does he still have the underlying condition?
3/16 Ticket Estimate: Current Sales Estimate: 12,333 So I have been looking at prior seasons data, focused on 1999 on since games played at the Shoe have a different math to them. Specifically, our top ten seasons for average attendance since I think we would all like to break a record or two. Of those only the 2016 2nd home game (played in mid-April) and the 2nd game in 1999 at Mapfre (played in May) ever broke 15k. In fact, most were around 12k. Meaning from our top 10 attendance seasons we are already higher than the median. If tickets continue to sell fairly well, they follow the pattern from last year/the game on 3/2, and the weather cooperates we could be looking at my estimate closing out somewhere around 15,500. However, my estimate was 1.6k low last time and the average margin of error is 2k. If that is consistent we are looking at somewhere between 16.5k-17k. Which would put us at one of the largest 2nd games at Mapfre, potentially the second largest. That may seem crazy but my estimate for Crewsmas from the same time out from the start of that game is only 900 tickets higher. If that holds that would put us at 17.1k attendance. New Caveat: So good news bad news situation here. I was playing around with the STM ticket selector (since they took the seat map down) to try to get a feel for how many were left and how accurate my count was still and discovered something interesting. Essentially it appears is no longer a separate pool of season tickets, when you use the selector what it does is give you options for seats that are currently unsold at all the remaining home games. I tested this by viewing the seats available in Center Circle STM and then comparing them to the seats available in the same sections for the next 3 home games. This makes sense at this point because if a seat is unsold for a game why not sell it for the season or a multigame pass at this point. The bad news is that this means is that my STM count is now out the window for accuracy. Even mapping what is currently listed and trying to track seats I would have to have some sort of map running for each game independently and then aggregating availability collectively. At which point what I would have done is literally coded out TicketMaster and the FO ticket platform, which I don't have the time to do. Good News is that this means that my in-game counts could potentially be more accurate as the pool of available vs. withheld vs. sold is potentially more transparent if you are mapping those things. We will have to see if that plays out but it is a possibility IF I am mapping the rows correctly (big if).
There was an infection in/near the screw used to fix it the first time (that's not uncommon--has happened to friends of mine) and Dr. Edwards replaced the screw and cleaned things up in a second surgery. He did not do the first surgery, BTW. This is all according to reports I've read.
Also I feel zero need to defend the attendance on Crewsmas. I personally think it was great. All I will say is that looking at Crewsmas attendance between 2007-2019 we went from the 2nd worst Crewsmas attendance in 2018 to the 2nd largest one in 2019. To have a community abused the way Precourt did over the past 5 years and for it to jump that significantly is a major accomplishment. Ideally, every game would be a sellout but living in the real world we need to realize we came from an incredibly damaged and dark place and fully recovered in less than two months. If we can keep the momentum and positivity going we will be setting 5, 10, and lifetime records all year. Honestly, to those that are super critical of the attendance ask yourself if any other club in MLS set a 5-year attendance record for their home opener (which we did) if the press and attitude toward it would be anything but jubilant. The fans will come we just need to keep going to games and supporting the club.
So who, exactly, is criticizing attendance last Saturday? Some random social media trolls? A US soccer thought leader? I've seen people on Twitter saying that they think people who are arguing this are assholes (agreed), I've just not encountered that opinion myself. Anyway, re: the 16th, at least it seems as though there will be a major warming trend by late next week. Temps mid-next week are forecast to be in the low-mid 50s, though with a chance of rain. Obviously, it's too early to bank on any kind of forecast right now. Still, if we can get through these first two March games with relatively decent weather, it obviously has to help attendance. Winning at NE this weekend wouldn't hurt, either.
Go to home games, take a friend, host get-togethers for away games, or go to watch parties, and take a friend. Be the change you want to see.
There are not quite enough warm weather teams for this to work, yet. Warm/Dome = 6. LAG, LAFC, Orlando, Houston, Atlanta, Vancouver. Not frigid = Seattle, Portland, San Jose, perhaps Dallas. Everywhere else is cold or frigid. Unless I am missing somewhere? 9/10 of 24. But when Miami & Austin + Phoenix/Sac, methinks, all of a sudden it is 14/30. Throw in some more warmies (SD, SA, another FLA team, a NC team, Vegas) and the league can get to half the cities being tolerable through March/April. Then once July/August hit, the cold weather cities get home heavy. For us, the quarterhorse congress messes it up at oresent anyway.