I suspect that's only a small part of it--the main reason they draw huge crowds for the small games is that people know the big games will sell out, and their only hope of going to those games is buying season tickets. At Illinois, which rarely sells out football games, attendance at the early-season non-conference games usually much lower than for the conference games, because causal fans can easily buy tickets to just the attractive games on the schedule--they can even wait a few weeks into the season to see whether the team is any good. OTOH, Illinois basketball has plenty of early-season games that are announced sellouts even when the arena is a quarter empty--not because 4,000 people suddenly couldn't go to the game, but because those people had to buy season tickets just to get tickets to the conference games.
Re: Re: Average Attendance for Soccer League From Around the World A few of the teams in the Czech first division play in small towns. Blsany only has a population of a few thousand (stadium 4,000).... Synot plays in a town of 6,000 (stadium 3,500)... and Ceske Budejovice plays in a stadium with a capacity of 1,500. Average attendance for the first few rounds of the Gambrinus Liga is close to 5,000. http://fotbal.idnes.cz/db_fotbal.asp?st_divaci=1000087 Not that anyone cares....
Widely-held belief that I do not think is, in fact, true. If some 67% of I-A schools realize positive net revenue from football (as they did in 2001), yet the vast majority of I-A schools' athletic departments as a whole lose money, football and basketball are certainly helping those athletic departments from losing a heck of a lot more than they are already losing, but they're not covering the expenses of the entire department, if you consider "covering the expenses" to mean actually being greater than the expenses.
This thread is meaningless... But quite interesting. Does Wales really only average 283 people in their league?
Re: This thread is meaningless... Sounds right. The pro (and top semi pro) Welsh teams play in English leagues. The Welsh League would probably be around the standard of the sixth or seventh levels of English leagues.
Well, from articles, Ohio State budgets $70 million a year for athletics. They made $2.6 million last year. Ohio State spent $6.4 million on football, and brought in $28.2 million. They spent $2.4 million on basketball and brought in $11.4 million. Throw in $8 million for donations, $4.1 million in merchandise, and spend $8.9 million in scholarships for all sports. As for my argument on ticket pricing, it was an example for teams that sellout (keeping demand above capacity). Since demand drops a lot when people know there's open seats available. And OSU did get only 98,000 for the Texas Tech game last year, but it was played two weeks before the fall semester started as a 'preseason' game. But the simple fact remains, if it weren't for Basketball and Football, schools in general would not have the money to fund other sports. Over $51 million in revenue from merchandise, donations, football, and basketball. Only $22 million were made from the other 20-plus sports. And whether they cost more than their revenue is irrelevant, thanks to the profits from the big two sports. Especially at $4 or $5 per ticket for soccer, or free admission to students. Sykotyk
It's not irrelevant, but yes, it's the profits from those two sports that allow the "non-revenue" sports to have any amount of money whatsoever. But they're not covering the costs (at most schools. If Ohio State's making a profit, they're one of the very few). They're contributing mightily to the upkeep. BTW, since this is all getting off-topic, I just added NCAA football (at least Division I-A) to the Sports Attendance Database.
Re: Re: This thread is meaningless... There are two pro sides in the Welsh League, although one will almost certainly have to return to semi-pro football due to financial problems, and the other has merged with Oswestry (which is in England, but members of the Welsh FA).
Metro Area Population Estimates for A-League teams: Team........Metro Area Toronto.....4,682,897 Atlanta.....3,857,097 Seattle.....3,465,760 Montreal....3,426,350 Minnesota...2,872,109 Pittsburgh..2,331,336 Portland....2,180,996 Vancouver...1,986,965 Cincinnati..1,960,995 Milwaukee...1,648,199 Va.Beach....1,562,365 Indiana.....1,536,665 Charlotte...1,417,217 Rochester...1,079,073 Richmond......961,416 Calgary.......951,315 Syracuse......732,920 El Paso.......701,908 Charleston....552,803 US cities data is from 1999. Canadian cities data is from 2001.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Average Attendance for Soccer League From Around the World I think your interpretation of what passes for a "small town" varies a tad from what it does elsewhere. Prague has 4 pro teams. 14 of the 18 cities listed have a population bigger than Prague. Small in this context is well under 50,000 people. As for Wales, it only has a few towns that aren't tiny. Cardiff will pull in 15,000 this season in Div 1. Swansea will get about 5000 in Div 3. Wrexham (pop 50,000) will get about the same in Div 2. Newport County and Merthyr Tydfil will pull in just under 1000 in non-league. There's probably not another town in Wales with a population higher than 25,000.
It should be noted that there are between 1-2 million mexicans living within an hour of El Paso on the Mexican side. Not sure if its impossible to drive to an A-league game for them, but I know there is no MFL team there either
1 New York 21,199,865 2 Los Angeles 16,373,645 3 Chicago 9,157,540 4 Washington-Baltimore 7,608,070 5 San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose 7,039,362 6 Boston 5,819,100 7 Dallas 5,221,801 8 Denver 2,581,506 9 Kansas City 1,776,062 10 Columbus 1,540,157 2000 Census numbers
It bothers me that the "Voice of Reason!" should need an exclamation point. And on topic, the fact of the matter is that average attendance is a rather goofy state to use in terms of looking at the health of the league. It's ONE factor. And it's a factor whose impact on the overall bottomlline is wildly divergent from one league to the next. TV deals, sponsorships, ticket prices/revenues, stadium ownership, number of actual dates/overall attendance, etc. Lots of factors.
21 mill is from the US Census. its the same rules they use to make Dallas 5 mill, and C bus 1.5 It doen not sound too crazy to me though. NYC proper has over 8 mill, Nassau has gotta be at least 1.5, ans Suffolk has 1.45 mill. thats 11 mill. add in west chester, putnum, and fairfield counties, and then pretty much all of N Jersey As far as the Exclamation point, I registered it without, but i must have mistyped something in my password as I never was able to actually use it, so i have to make a new one with the ! I pondered using ? but well I chose what I chose
You cannot possible expect someone in Suffolk or Putnam to drive 100+ miles to get to a Metros game at Giants Stadium. That would be 8 hours roundtrip with traffic. Even Nassau is way too far from Giants stadium. As for as the Metros are concerned the market is around 10-12 million. NOT 21m.
maybe, but even the lower figure is larger than the entire populations of countries such as Belgium and the Czech Republic, so beating them on attendance averages isn't that surprising.
No doubt the Metro NY is the largets metro market in the world. That's why in the NASL days, the Cosmos average was beating everyone in the world.