I watched the game last night hoping to see a few more L.A. own goals. Announcer said, "Sell-out crowd" and 27K attendance posted in the Merc today. The sideline we saw on T.V. looked to be about 55% - 60%. Padding the attendance stats????
It is tickets sold, not fans attending. I was visiting the LA boards the past week, and there were some posts saying that in order to get Real Madrid tickets fans had to buy tickets to this game and/or other games. Also, we've seen Quakes fans talk about how LA "sells" tickets by giving them away 2 for 1, etc. Having said that, I agree, the actual turnout was pretty sad, considering it was against New England and it was on a date that traditionally draws a lot of soccer fans.....something's not going well in LA based on that turnout.
The camera focuses on the high price sideline seats. I'm betting many of those are corporate tickets which might go unused on long weekends like this. I'm sure they had a decent crowd. When they panned over the cheaper sections a few times they looked pretty packed.
When I was down there for the Cup final a couple years ago, it looked the same way. Between the restaraunt and the munchie stands, there are always a lot of people out of their seats. On TV it always looks like a lot of no shows, I think a lot of the people are up and about. Does anyone have firm stats on that?
I was at the game last night and at the beginning it looked like about 18-20k and as the game went on the stands looked more full. I would guess 24-25k were there. There is a lot of standing room areas too, sometimes people prefer to stand and watch along the concourses. And as some have mentioned before, it was a requirement to buy tickets for this game to buy Real Madrid tickets. I attended the game on extra tickets that someone bought to go see Real Madrid.
Is anyone seriously concerned with the attendance at Galaxy games. They're one of the teams I'm not worried about I saw the recent DC game at Columbus. Now there's something to have me concerned. There were some people there, but on TV it came across as a "Dead" environment.
The DC-Cbus game Saturday was one of the better attended ones here this year. I didn't watch the replay afterward, but I don't doubt that it would come across as dead on the telly when the home team blows as much as the Crew does right now.
When I checked, there were quite a few people sitting on the hill. Plus, you always gotta check the 2nd half, because this is LA after all, no one comes for the first half.
They had a camera shot from behind one of the goals looking across the field at the seats behind the far goal. Looked pretty packed to me. It's like a game in Argentina! Not many fans in midfield, but behind the goals is packed.
I think what's happening is that due to LA traffic a quarter to half of the people don't make it to the match until the 40 minute mark or so. And then at 50 minutes another quarter to a half of the people start heading back to their cars to try to beat the traffic.
Slightly off-topic from the subject of LA attendance, but did anyone else hear the NE announcers say that Sampson had called The Bruce and asked if he could have Mr. Judas back from the Nats Gold Cup camp for this game. The Bruce told him, and I am paraphrasing: "No way, if I do that, I'd have to send Noonan and Dempsey back, too." The more I hear about Sampson, the more I am convinced he is a total jagoff.
Yeah - they talked briefly about this last night on the television broadcast of the New England/LA game. If you want further entertainment, check out the LA boards, they are all upset that Arena won't let Donovan out of the Gold Cup during the Quarterfinal/Semifinal week so he can go play for the Gals in the Real Madrid friendly......
Based on the view of the HDC from my couch. I would guess that there were about 25,000 fan's at the game. That's still a great turn out. Good job Galaxy.
Not related to the attendance but I wish FSC would improve on a few things. First off while it was okay to put the kid on TV couldn't they have done it during halftime instead of while the game was being played? Secondly, they could really improve their camera work over all, far to many zoom-ins on players, coaches etc. while the game is being played and then other times the camera pans out much too far. Thirdly they easily have the worst commentary teams, Chris Sullivan is okay but the others are boring and some even put me off wanting to watch (Bretos and Hopkins). Hopefully they'll improve by getting better camera crews and better commentators and saving the "human interest" stuff for halftime.
You mean you don't like it when Chris Sullivan sings in Italian for a few seconds or says stuff like "ticky-tacky" and "ta-ta-ta" with that pseudo-Euro-Latino accent (despite the fact that he's from here)? Seriously, though, I agree that he's a pretty good color analyst. GO SAN JOSE EARTHQUAKES!!! -G
Who was the one that couldn't pronounce Shalrie Joseph's name last night, kept calling him "Sharlie"? I kept thinking of the line in Airplane!..."and stop calling me Shirley"!
That might have been Sullivan. I know that it was Sullivan who kept calling Grabavoy "Grabavov" for much of the game. GO SAN JOSE EARTHQUAKES!!! -G
I'd like if they gave Ray Hudson the nationally televised games, he's the best one I've heard on Fox.
Just imagine the broadcasting tandem of Christopher Sullivan and Ray Hudson. Which one of them would be the play-by-play announcer and which would be the color analyst? GO SAN JOSE EARTHQUAKES!!! -G
I'm right there with you on the "kid during the game" thing. I think it's great that MLS is kid-friendly and I have no problem with that interview but I totally agree that there is no need to go away from the game for that. I also had the volume muted because of the homer LA announcers on the telecast. It's funny how the team with the best record in the league never got credit for playing good defense whenever LA's attack got snuffed--instead, it was just poor execution by LA. My whole evening was made when NE put the ball in the net on the next to last touch of the game. I'll be holding this one in reserve for the next time we get an earfull from the Galactoscum about blowing a game at home. Especially for them, it could be catastrophic if things turn sour for them at home. Everybody already knows they can't win on the road.
Yeah, Hudson should be doing nationally televised games. He'd add a lot of personality, passion, and excitement to the games and I think ratings would go up as a result.