Code: % of season completed 18.8% Year Average Median %<10K %>20k 1996 24341 23073 13.3% 60.0% 1997 16787 14780 26.7% 26.7% 1998 15525 13037 11.1% 22.2% 1999 14140 13673 33.3% 16.7% 2000 13211 12645 30.6% 13.9% 2001 14846 14504 17.2% 10.3% 2002 16609 13779 11.5% 19.2% 2003 13984 13240 32.1% 17.9% 2004 15609 13614 28.6% 32.1% 2005 14614 12499 25.0% 16.7% 2006 16522 16280 16.7% 25.0% 2007 14773 13935 13.9% 16.7% 2008 15579 15271 15.4% 30.8% 2009 14678 13439 16.7% 14.3% 2010 16820 14389 13.3% 24.4% Final Numbers Year Average Median %<10K %>20k 1996 17406 15093 21.9% 26.3% 1997 14619 12733 25.0% 16.3% 1998 14312 11871 26.6% 16.1% 1999 14282 12973 32.3% 15.1% 2000 13756 12690 34.4% 12.5% 2001 14962 13431 26.6% 17.7% 2002 15821 14108 17.1% 18.6% 2003 14898 13641 23.3% 18.0% 2004 15559 13285 24.7% 25.3% 2005 15108 12619 27.1% 17.7% 2006 15504 14175 18.8% 18.8% 2007 16770 15353 8.2% 29.7% 2008 16459 15188 11.0% 24.8% 2009 16037 14686 14.7% 20.9%
Code: AAQ after 18.8% complete Year Average Median <10k >20k AAQ 1996 1 1 3 1 1.50 1997 3 4 11 4 5.50 1998 8 13 1 7 7.25 1999 13 9 15 10 11.75 2000 15 14 13 14 14.00 2001 9 5 9 15 9.50 2002 4 8 2 8 5.50 2003 14 12 14 9 12.25 2004 6 10 12 2 7.50 2005 12 15 10 10 11.75 2006 5 2 7 5 4.75 2007 10 7 5 10 8.00 2008 7 3 6 3 4.75 2009 11 11 7 13 10.50 2010 2 6 3 6 4.25
AAQ is now the 2nd best ever after 18.8% of the games played only trailing the nearly unbeatable 1996 at this point of the season complete. Looking at how ugly the conversations have been this year about how "bad" attendance has been, were people trying to kill themselves last year at this time? Now that was ugly
I can't figure out a clean way to copy this in, but if you want to see club by club attendance numbers, go here and scroll down http://www.mlssoccer.com/stats
Is there a place on the new MLS site where I can easily find attendance for individual games?. The old site had it all on one page. Now it looks like I must pull up each individual game recap.
I think we are seeing those conversations this year for two reasons: First, an increasing number of teams are routinely selling out. That is building an expectation (fair or not) that all teams should be doing this. Second, a couple of teams are doing very badly. When contrasted with the teams that are doing well, the bad outliers really stand out - more so than they did in the past. (Although bad teams will be even more glaringly obvious in the future as Vancouver, Portland, and Montreal swell the ranks of the sell out teams.)
It's been a good year so far. Better than I had expected. Yes it will drop a little once PPL park opens, but throw in a couple doubleheaders and some DP inspired crowds if we score some names like expected (i.e. Henry will draw crowds) then we are good shape to potentially finish in the top 4.
Fair warning to the attendance hounds, I don't expect much from tomorrow night's game. Its the Rapids only home game in a 6 week span, on a Wednesday night, on Cinco de Mayo. I'll be shocked if they announce a 5 digit number.
Houston seems to be embracing the latino market in their area and holding Cinco de Mayo themed festivities at the game. That and being the local rival should give them decent attendance for a midweek game. Not optimistic about the other 3 games tomorrow. How much longer will people turn out to watch this DC team?
Impressive. Last weekend had a few underwhelming crowds, and the AAQ still went up to second place. A lot of newer fans seem to be under the impression that other teams should be able to wipe out 15 years of history and just start fresh like they are doing. It simply doesn't work that way. History is impossible to erase.
Thats odd. It seems to me in a city like Denver with such a big Mexican population cinco de mayo would be a perfect opportuinty to add some festivities to the night to sell the game. But oh I forgot, that takes effort from the front office. What was I thinking?
A much better place to see all of the averages, which includes links to each teams game-by-game home attendance: http://www.mls-daily.com/2010/03/2010-mls-attendance.html
The economy is struggling (or not). Seattle invented soccer (or not.) LA is a big concern (or not.) Dallas should be moved downtown (or not.) United management is intentionally tanking DC attendance to justify moving (or not.) Stadiums need to be downtown (or not.) MLS needs to stop appealing to the SUV crowd (or not.) The league should take Kraft's franchise from him (or not.) Now y'all can proceed.
The problem is that most of the CdM celebrations are well established, so the Rapids have a hard time drawing people away from them. Plus yeah, effort from the front office. Honestly I'm not even sure we're doing anything for CdM at the game tomorrow. The advertising for this game compared to the prior two seems to be less, so the Rapids may just be writing it off as a lost cause and focusing on the next one. Unfortunately that's Memorial Day weekend. The Rapids have one Saturday evening non-holiday weekend home game before the middle of July this season, and only 6 total. Don't expect the Rapids numbers to go up for a while.
all of that is background noise. the rapids attendance isn't going up any appreciable amount until ownership starts acting like it gives a damn.
The league need to step in and give these bad owners a few yellow and red cards and set them the Seattle Sounders path or NY for that matter. DCU need a winning team, their fans are too smart for the BS the new owner giving them. Curt is alright, but come on already.
You may be right........... This (taken from the Rapids new site) seem very scaled back from years past. Maybe they went all out in the past and are now realizing that its not worth the effort, but I don't think people will be drawn to this by great numbers.
I'll repeat the comment I made on someone's blog. Just who exactly is supposed to lose games in this league? Seattle, because their fans will come out no matter what?
Kansas City and San Jose because they are capped at 10k. However, in a year and a half KC has to start winning because they'll have their new stadium built and they need to start winning in order to get new fans. San Jose has to start winning in two years since their stadium is supposedly coming out then, etc, etc. How about NER? Kraft doesn't care if NER pulls in crap in attendance as he only cares about the Patriots and the mall and even if NER is only bringing in a few thousand, that's still a few more thousand people that are in the proximity of Patriot Place than would be otherwise. As for Seattle... I don't think you want the Sounders to start losing on a regular basis. The fans are already getting leery about the Sounders 2-2-2 start and some are already putting on the life preservers in preparation to jump of the boat.
But..but..but..for the last two years all the Seattle posters have been telling us that they're the best fans iin MLS and they are the new standard. Are you saying that they were actually just fairweather fans like many of us suggested? That can't be right, Seattle invented fandom! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .