If people pay for tickets and dont show up, you’re right it’s not a major problem. But for the perception of the league it’s not a good look. Clearly winning teams draw fans and losing teams struggle. But for a league that’s still trying to establish itself in the mainstream, we need full stadiums more than the other leagues. Even I, as an avid fan, switched off. Ive seen probably 10 Vancouver games in the past two years, and for me Ive never seen that many empty seats. I also dont get why some posters on here disregard speculation about actual attendance. To me it’s the most reliable way to test market strength. If a team can come close to selling out even when theyre in a funk, that’s great to see. Unfortunately, not many can. (And yes I know this happens in the other major leagues too)
Because this thread has, over and over, broken down into fights over "I was there, it was X!" vs. "I watched on TV, it was Y!" to the point that at two different times long-term posters who were unofficial moderators on this thread were driven away. The problem isn't the concept, the problem is that historically we can't discuss that without the thread becoming useless.
Attendance is so bad that a bunch of people just spent hundreds of millions of dollars to get in on the action, and another couple groups are about to drop even more money. How will we survive?
Well, an invested owner will spend money to at least have a competent squad that is entertaining to watch if nothing else. They'll also spend money to hire competent staff to make fans happy, from the FO and stadium staff. They'll also put the stadium in a place that is accessible to said fans. As you've noted, certain markets dont have invested owners and/or too poor owners to manage this. Like mine. I imagine once MLS is set they'll deal with the cheapskates as best they can given their bylaws.
And... would you look at that.. I just Thanosed the last page because certain people can’t follow a rather simple rule.
Might want to check your guantlet...or the wish you made. Looks like you wiped out more than half of the posts! Also...spoiler alert?
One only has to observe the totally pathetic TV ratings to understand the lack of excitement around this league which translates to many distributed tickets resulting in no-shows
I have said this many times, and likely will say it many more unless and until @Yoshou kicks me off - and have you noticed how unapologetic he is about these things? "Yeah, I shit canned your shitty post. Don't like it? Pound sand, asshole" - but the one thing that finally convinced me that MLS/Garber wereth real force behind shutting down Columbus, not Fratboi Twochins, was early on when Garber, commenting on the attendance at a playoff game, told reporters that, sadly, while the stated "tickets distributed" was around 17,000, the actual "drop count" was under 13,000. I nearly fell off my chair. This is exactly the information that MLS would stand on the ramparts shaking fists at Drogon as he spit fire and death at them before they'd ever give up. Nuclear launch codes are treated with less secrecy. It proved that yes, MLS does in fact track ACTUAL turnstile counts at their games, they simply refuse to divulge them, ever. Except when they're trying to poleax a team. Now in that case, it was most likely a typical Don Garber mouth diarrhea moment; he was desperate for a fact of some kind, that came to mind and he spit it out before thinking. But the larger point is that the league knows, they know very well, they track it carefully and then they go to their website and post blatant lies.
I don't think there is much point in arguing about individual actual attendence figures for specific games, but I think it is fair enough to challenge the pattern of announced figures coming from a specific market. I don't imagine that there is anyone on this board who really believes that the announced attendance figures equate to the number of people who attend the game in every market. Over reporting of attendance in some markets appears to have been going on for a long time and MLS is unlikely to change their habits now. The bottom line is that there are some markets where I broadly believe the figures - Atlanta, Portland, Seattle, LAFC, Kansas etc there are markets where the the figures look a bit suspicious given the number of visible empty seats e.g. Toronto, Dallas, but probably aren't way off the mark and then there are the not remotely credible figures coming from the likes of Chicago and the Red Bulls. I like to know which category teams fall into. I recently asked about the announced attendance for Orlando vs Vancouver because I was at the game and I was disappointed at how empty the stadium was. It's only a couple of years since Orlando was getting crowds bigger than the capacity of the new stadium at the Orange bowl and in the first year at the new ground there appeared to be very few empty seats visible when watching games on TV. I was expecting an under performing team and the newness factor to have an impact, but it appears to be quite a severe impact. I fear Orlando has gone from being a fairly reliable reporter of attendance, though the bit of an over estimate stage and is now heading for the pants on fire stage. If that's the case, Orlando has had a large and rapid decrease in attendance and I was wondering if (i) other people with knowledge of the situation thought the same thing (ii) what they think the cause of the decline is.
Well said. I have made this exact point before. There are teams that are 99% accurate (tickets distributed are same as butts in seats) and some that probably aren't 50% accurate. The discussion of which teams are matching their announced numbers and which teams aren't even close is an EXTREMELY relevant discussion. There are many of us that agree. That discussion didn't fit in this thread in years past when this thread was actual numbers and stats and nerdfest (I loved it). Those days are over and this thread has changed. It has become just general discussion now. Things change and discussions change. It's time to adapt.
As long as those type of posters who caused problems are also willing to adapt and not destroy the thread I have no problem with it.
Maybe some feel that refusal to allow discussions of obvious thousands upon thousands difference between distributed and butts in seats is destroying any reason for this thread. Only discussing whatever number MLS decides to announce is pretty meaningless actually.
That is true if almost twice the ratings is considered close. NHL playoffs are far more popular than MLS playoffs. 2019 is producing record ratings in the playoffs. https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/2018/04/nhl-viewership-nbc-nbcsn-regular-season/ My problem with the NHL is that it is Niche and will always be that in the US. I want the MLS to become mainstream and the only soccer coverage that really comes close to mainstream is the World Cup. The premier league is more comparable to the NHL in ratings than the MLS which in my view is tragic. I would love for MLS to stop bailing out teams that make disastrous mistakes (Chicago) and use that money instead to promote this league nation wide both in rural America and Metropolitan America. 120k watching a game in prime time is not a good rating by any measure.
You know what, you weren't here to see how bad the threads got. This wasn't a "heavy handed moderator" thing, this was "this thread is toxic because 3-4 people are spending pages yelling back and forth and the rest of us have lost the point days ago" thing. (Something you should be familiar with actually...)
I should have been more specific. I meant NHL regular season games on NBCSN, which averaged 302k in 2017/18. That compares to 241k for MLS on ESPN, 294k on ESPN2 and 292k on Univision/UDN. FS1 has a problem. Virtually all sports on there get terrible ratings. And yes, NHL gets much bigger audiences than MLS for the playoffs and special events such as the Winter Classic. It's something MLS and Fox need to work on.
FWIW, Atlanta announced 68k and change today. Based on my vantage point and given that the upper seat extensions were not in use then by my guess the most amount of folks in their seats at one time was likely in the 64-65k range. Definitely points in the match where it was less.
Yes and those would have been behind me. I'm simply going by the amount of empty seats I saw knowing that without the extended seating folded down max capacity for soccer is, IIRC, 70k. But as always this comes with the "*" of being just my own opinion.
Dude its been monsoon in our area the past 2 half days in the low 50s. It's been really shitty and just down right nasty weather. The kind where MLB teams have delays/postponements and there are like 5 fans in the bleacher reachers. I don't mind this convo but we need to have context and not just trolling. Thats where some on here have become so harsh on even having this discussion. It usually turns into a proxy opposing fans pissing match or a way for antagonist to post comments. My thing is every league does this stuff with attendance MLB/NBA have been notorious for it. I don't think MLS has anything to prove like some say. The league is here and not going anywhere. Report the numbers and move on refrain from these type of troll pile on post that just spin into arguments. If you understand a sparse crowd at a MLB game with a rain delay then the same applies for a MLS game in the same region.