Dallas had the good old Zlatan attendance bump on sunny 75 degree day and still couldn't fill up their stadium. What a disaster of an organization. They are good at putting a quality product on the field, but not much else. In terms of attendance this coming Saturday, we are almost certain to see a drop but I wonder how large it will be. I think anything over 15k will be pretty solid, especially considering the high is supposed to be in the upper 30s last I checked.
It was a big part of FCD's marketing for the match. Presumably, a good chunk of attendees bought tickets assuming he would.
I'm aware. 75% of the people that showed up to watch the game in Dallas had no idea he wouldn't be playing though. They just know he's on the team. The same thing used to happen with Beckham. The Galaxy would roll into town and play in front of sellout crowds even though Beckham didn't even make the trip.
Did Beckham ever actually play in Columbus? He must have at some point, right? I mean, could be worse. MLS 1.0 saw the league, and hosting clubs, hype Freddie Adu as a reason why we should buy tickets to these kinds of games.
Beckham played once in Columbus in 2008. I remember going to the game and the stadium was packed because he was there. They put extra bleachers below the South stands. https://www.transfermarkt.us/columbus-crew-sc_los-angeles-galaxy/aufstellung/spielbericht/989155
I remember going to that match. We totally shut down Beckham and he got a stupid yellow showing his frustration. That yellow landed him a suspension in his next match. We, of course, were finishing our run to the shield.
I'm using the attendance thread to post the numbers. No judgement at all. I do see some disappointing numbers all over which doesn't bode well at all for the league. There's no reason for the Texas teams to be pulling in these numbers; ditto for the games in DC and Foxboro.
Somewhat. When you hold MLS to their own standards you see how short they fall. Which is a polite way of calling the league professional bullshitters.
Obviously Zlatan affects attendance, though it was known basically all week that he wouldnt play, so that probably hurt walk up.
I can guarantee you 75% of the people in that stadium had no idea he wouldn't play. Do you not realize how few people pay close enough attention to MLS to know a week ahead of time that Zlatan will not play? When LAG come here to play on May 8th, Zlatan will likely not even be on the 18-man roster. They play at NYRB on the 4th, in Columbus on the 8th, and then in LA on the 11th. He's going to hop on a private plane in NY and fly straight over Columbus and back to LA to rest up. With that being said, there will still be hundreds of morons in the stadium wearing Zlatan shirts. And thousands of other casual fans who decided to show up because Zlatan will be playing. None of them will have any idea he isn't even in the same timezone until the starters are announced.
The worst was listening to people kvetch about Beckham had "an obligation" to play "or at least show up" and trying to explain no such "obligation" exists. If the Crew FO was smart, they'd sell a package deal. You'd "The Zlatan game" plus: Sunday, June 23rd vs SKC at 7:30pm Wednesday, April 24th vs DCU at 7:30pm Sunday, September 29th vs Philadelphia at 5:00pm. Essentially, it's two weeknight games and the home finale. Two games which probably won't sell as many tickets plus it helps boost the finale, because why not? Save a few dollars per ticket per game if you buy all four. They know the LAG game will sell, so why not sell other games along with it? For all I know, this is already happening.
I think they should offer college ID discounts to anyone with a college ID for the two Wednesday night games. Make the tickets like $10-15. For the April 24th game, most OSU students will still be on campus for finals. For the game on May 8th, most colleges will done, meaning college kids will be back home for the summer with nothing to do, at least for the first week or two. This would be an easy way to get a solid 750-1k bump on the attendance.
So looking at this week's game the numbers haven't changed a ton since my last estimate. This is mostly because the FO hasn't been promoting it very much since you had the away game first. They just really started pushing it on social media yesterday/today and ticket sales are starting to move. We will see how it squares up. Historically the 2nd game isnt well attendance and our normal attendance (in our best seasons) is between 11k-13k. We have only gone over 15k twice in our top 10 selling seasons. If we are at 13k+ (which I think is likely) then our average will be somewhere between 15.5k-16k or higher. This is really the key as our attendance usually jumps up once the weather improves so if we can make it out of March/April with an average attendance of 16k-17k I think we are on track to break the season attendance record at Mapfre. I will do another count tomorrow to see how things go.
This will be something to keep an eye on as the season progresses. I think an attainable goal would be to finish 15th or 16th out of the 22 teams in the league.
We can do better than that. We finished 16th in 2016. If we build our attendance there is no reason we couldn't be in the 13-8 range depending on sellouts and expanded games. Closer to 13 this season then ramping up ideally with the new stadium. SKC was 11 last year averaging just under our sellout attendance at Mapfre. If we get 18.5k+ we are probably 12th or 13th right there alone. 18-18.5k puts us 14th-15th. Honestly, though when the new stadium opens we need to be looking at SKC as our competition and ideally be boxing them out for a spot on the verge of the top 10.
It'll be tough, though note it's a 24 team league now. Here are the 2018 numbers: https://soccerstadiumdigest.com/2018-mls-attendance/ FCC is going to have a strong attendance year - very likely a top 5 team in MLS - which will effectively bump us down another spot in the overall attendance standings. Based on last year's numbers, we'd need to come close to our all time highest attendance average to have a shot at 15-16th place. I'm guessing 17-18th place, and that's if we manage not to have any really poor outings at the gate.
Based on recent trends, if we want to be much higher than 15th we need to sellout almost every game. Once we open the new stadium, we just need to sellout every game. Heck, we need to do that right now. If we sellout every game, our position in the rankings doesn't matter.