This season includes the ninth and tenth times a soccer team averaged over 40,000: six by the Sounders, three by the Cosmos (the real ones), and one by Atlanta U. Atlanta is taking the top spot, leaving the last Cosmos brag as being the only team with multiple 45+ years.
70,426 and counting so far as of, as of 10/6 (48,115), i hope they open up as much of SRO tickets possible.
33,767 in New England 25,219 for NYRB 25,166 for Orlando 27,866 for Toronto 13,102 for Colorado 19,083 for SKC 23,377 for LAG 48,478 for Seattle 22,120 for Vancouver ??,??? for Portland Average well over 25,000 on Sunday (assuming Portland drew their typical 21,144)
An attendance bump happens for the final game at NE pretty much every single year - something to do with unused tickets in the season ticket package I believe.
Same here in Colorado. Unused tix can be used. Only difference is that the fans here give about as much $&it as KSE does about this team.
quick question about this....is the boost an actual boost in attendance (ie. do people who have not used their tickets all show up for the last match) or is it a "tickets distributed boost" (ie. since that is the last day they can be used they are counted as distributed for that match and therefore part of that match's attendance)?
See, I think this is a valid question and discussion but the "can't discuss butts in the seats" crew would blast many if they posed this question or line of discussion. Just trying to point out there are times to discuss butts in the seats.
Bring on the slippery slope fallacy. Though now I am trying to figure out how to discuss whether there really were more butts in seats, and it's kind of impossible from pics. All depends on angle and time picture was taken...
I didn't mean it to start a "butts in seats" discussion....was just curious (living in a market with much lower season seat flexibility) how people actually use that flexibility.
MLS will hit the 22 000 average next sunday as both seattle and atlanta have home games, so crowds in excess of 40 000 will happen- MLS sits at an average of 21 892 as of yesterday
Kind of interesting that Chivas will probably have the attendance record forever with 92,650 for a doubleheader. Hardly any stadiums are big enough to beat it.
I think it is an interesting question and have wondered myself. It looked like a pretty decent crowd on TV. Looked bigger than normal.
ATL will have well over 70K. They are opening the entire stadium and had sold 70,426 as of a week ago. 22K season average is a near certainty at this point. Meanwhile, this doesn't get much discussion, but aggregate attendance, league-wide, should end up around 8.3 million which would cause MLS to leapfrog Ligue 1 and Liga MX into fifth place in the world, behind only EPL, Bundesliga, La Liga, and just barely behind Serie A. And that's with only 22 teams. When the league expands to 28, it will easily pass Serie A, and likely pass La Liga, in aggregate attendance for the #3 spot in the world. Granted, most other leagues have only 20 teams whereas MLS is on a path to 28. But MLS plays only 34 regular season games vs. 38 in many other leagues. Also, since we don't have many clubs in close proximity to one another, we can't sell a few thousand tickets to visiting fans. We have to rely almost entirely on home fans for a majority of games. Ultimately, aggregate attendance indicates the total number of people buying tickets to see a senior division soccer match in one country vs. another, so I'd argue it's even more relevant than comparing average attendance.
It was much bigger than normal. The lower bowl, before they dug out the end zone and put some premium seats there, held about 30k in the early days of the stadium, not sure what impact the renovations had. The lower bowl seemed full, or close to it, and then they had a decent amount of people up in the red club seats. So it seems like ~35k seats were probably open and it seemed fairly full.
Isn't that kind of the point of the rule to not discuss butts in seats? It's pretty much impossible to come up with any standard that takes in to account all of the variables - camera angles, people at the concessions, in the parking lot, time of game, etc. Even if you're going to single-handedly count every visible spectator in a seat, you're still not going to come up with anything close to a relevant number to discuss.
Actually, MLS is behind the 2. Division German Bundesliga and the Chinese Super League, then the Serie A. I don't know why we still have to validate success with attendance? MLS isn't dying. We should appreciate the hardcore fans who support the MLS and try to stop convincing this country and the world we like soccer. I for one enjoy our cult status and soccer has been around long enough for people to like it or hate it. I know people who are well aware of soccer and still don't like it. That's fine by me.
I don't think actual discrepancies make any difference. Now that this thread has evolved to less if a data driven thread to a more broad view of attendance trends and it's impact on the perceived financial health of the league, things other than the announced numbers are important topics of discussion imo. Things such as pricing, giveaways, promotions and obvious no shows are worth discussing. I agree we should not be arguing over butts in seats. But when it's clearly different than the announced, knowing why is relevant. Was it weather, promotions, poor team performance, etc. If we'd rather go over the same fish puns again and again, then let me know, because that makes this thread completely obsolete and I'll just look at the numbers elsewhere.
http://www.football-lineups.com/tourn/2_Bundesliga_2016-2017/stats/home_avg_atte/ .... 21722 for 2 Bundesliga last year, 17265 so far this year. MLS isn't behind that.
"the MLS" ?... "THE MLS" ?... oh, wait, you are a newbie, so you couldn't possibly know. Ok, you are forgiven.
Tip of the cap to the Rapids ticketing group. The fact that we managed to average 15,322 and reports are season ticket holder retention is solid is remarkable given the utter crap that was on the field this season. I bet they're doing it mainly through corporate and group tickets but whatever they're doing, its working.