I spend at most half the game in my seat at Yankee Stadium or Gillette, even less in the cold. The best way to watch a game is standing at a rail with a beer in hand!
I was invited to a focus group for the design of the new Crew stadium and had a long discussion about keeping the supporters section GA. Yesterday I was with 10+ people that had tickets all over the stadium but wanted to enjoy together, so we stood on the rail above the Noedecke. I do wish we could stop using attendance as a way to berate those we don't like. There are different circumstances and configurations that might make the announced number different from the perception.
It depends on why the attendance is going down. For the past few years the Sounders haven’t had a hard cap on attendance and would just open up additional sections if the current sections started getting full. They’ve also been selling a bunch of tickets on Groupon. The end result of this has been that “ticket scarcity” and the secondary market has largely disappeared, which could have started to impact season ticket sales (I’m just speculating here, I haven’t actually seen anything from the Sounders confirming this). However, there is bound to be a reason why they re-implemented a hard cap and to have that cap be below their attendance average. Also, after three seasons of sleep walking through the first half of the season, then turning on the afterburners in the last half of the season, the Sounders have unintentionally cultivated a situation where fans don’t think the first half of the season matters. That’s going to decrease enthusiasm for early season games and, in some cases, regular season in general.
Did you not see the game? It started raining/freezing rain two hours before kick off and didn't stop during the entire game. Conditions were pretty horrible, if this was played at RFK, they probably would have lucky to get 3,000 to show up.
The commentators said all 20k tickets were sold minutes before kickoff. If that is accurate then this number is turnstile count.
You obviously didnt watch. It was pretty much as bad as it can get weather wise and still play the game.
As I explained previously, commentators make shit up when it comes to attendance. They get their info from BigSoccer rumors.
I am surprised people showed up at games like DC vs Atlanta and Colorado vs Portland. Really bad weather yet people still showed up. That tells you they are really passionate about their team.
I would not underestimate your hypothesis. I offer a grand sample size of n=1, so it has to be true, since I feel the same way and voted with my wallet. I was a Whitecaps season ticket holder until this season (because I moved away this year.) One of the reasons I kept buying the tickets was that Vancouver kept the capacity at a level that allowed me to resell my tickets the times I couldn’t go. I usually lost money or sold at FV, but at least there was some recovery and I had the emotional satisfaction of sitting in the same, excellent seat every game. If they had made all 50K seats available in BC Place every game, my incentive to buy season tickets would have almost evaporated.
I went by what is available here: https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/@5417737/historic. It is not super-specific and I don't intend on jumping into the weeds.
Considering 18 degrees set the record for coldest ever league game I thought you might want that detail.