Code: % of season completed 23.10% Year Average Median %<10K %>20k 1996 23043 21141 13.5% 59.5% 1997 16346 14485 21.6% 24.3% 1998 14664 12279 18.2% 20.5% 1999 13883 13552 31.8% 15.9% 2000 12962 12645 31.8% 11.4% 2001 15058 14496 19.4% 13.9% 2002 15762 13416 18.8% 18.8% 2003 13789 12972 35.3% 17.6% 2004 15381 13614 26.5% 29.4% 2005 14081 12292 27.3% 13.6% 2006 16044 15968 20.5% 20.5% 2007 15139 14173 13.3% 20.0% 2008 15621 14972 14.6% 29.2% 2009 14796 13439 17.3% 17.3% Final Numbers Year Average Median %<10K %>20k 1996 17406 15093 21.9% 26.3% 1997 14619 12733 25.0% 16.3% 1998 14312 11871 26.6% 16.1% 1999 14282 12973 32.3% 15.1% 2000 13756 12690 34.4% 12.5% 2001 14962 13431 26.6% 17.7% 2002 15821 14108 17.1% 18.6% 2003 14898 13641 23.3% 18.0% 2004 15559 13285 24.7% 25.3% 2005 15108 12619 27.1% 17.7% 2006 15504 14175 18.8% 18.8% 2007 16770 15353 8.2% 29.7% 2008 16459 15188 11.0% 24.8%
Average: 9th out of 14 Median: 9th out of 14 <10k: 4th out of 14 >20k: 10th out of 14 AAQ = (9+9+4+10)/4 = 8
But not the worst of the season: Week....G....Total...Average.Median Week 1..7...119,667..17,095..16,053 Week 2..7....99,177..14,168..12,462 Week 3..8...104,463..13,058..12,200 Week 4..7...120,804..17,258..19,494 Week 5..7....84,577..12,082..12,708 Week 6..9...146,967..16,330..14,611 Week 7..6....84,611..14,102..12,257 And if you want to look at the numbers from MLS, USL-1 and WPS together, have at it.
I was flipping thru the channels yesterday and stopped for a second on Univision (only spanish channel I get on cable in Madison). Actually enjoyed watching some of the game. Was actually better to watch without the constant noise from the fans. Though it was a bit strange when there was a goal scored and no reaction.
In Bridgeview, as a visiting team, Club America (mid-week friendly: 17,342) outdrew Seattle (weekend league match: 10,288) for games versus the Fire.
(Or "Bridgeville," as my man Glenn Davis said. ) I think the Fire FO put more of a premium on pushing the America game. They pulled out a lot of stops. And, obviously, there's a slightly different audience - not that there aren't CA/MFL fans who wouldn't normally go to a Fire game (there are), but if the economy makes them prioritize one of the two matches in four days, you can imagine where the choice leads.
and with RBNY having three straight home games, they're gonna get a whole hell of a lot worse the next few weeks.
Home games for the rest of May: New York.......4 Chivas USA.....3 Houston........3 New England....3 Chicago........2 Columbus.......2 DC United......2 FC Dallas......2 Kansas City....2 Los Angeles....2 Salt Lake......2 Seattle........2 Toronto FC.....2 Colorado.......1 San Jose.......1
I think the upcoming week should be ok. One thing MLS needs to do is get rid of wednesday friday and sunday games. The only games that should be played away from saterday is 1 ESPN thursday game a week, and 1 telefutura sunday game a week. This change alone would probably boost the yearly attendance by 1K-2K. Neverthless, we cant change that. I'm hopeful that Kansas City can sellout 10K on wednesday, though my suspicion is they'll have 7-8K. Salt Lake will probably draw 10-12K on Wednesday as well. I think it's safe to say the Red Bull New York will have no more and no less than 10K on friday night. Columbus had a great crowd last week and I think 14-15K is a possibility. DC United has to pick it up...what is wrong with their fans this year? Neverthless I think around 14K is safe, but they should have 17-18K. Chicago Fire will bring in 11K. Houston Dynamo vs. FC Dallas will probably bring in 20K. Chivas USA should have the normal 15K. Sounders have already sold out, so that could be as high as 30K or as low as 28,500. I'm guessing average attendance this week to be around 14,600. But, my optomistic side (giving everytime a slightly higher boost than I think they will) would bring weekely attendance to right at 16,000.
I'm not sure if there are fan overlaps, but its worth noting that the Bulls were playing a game 7 against Boston Celtics that night.
absolutely. and one wonders if that short-term gain (of a nice crowd and money for a mid-week international friendly) might in some way off-set the larger goal of sustained/useful MLS average home attendances. would that 10,288 from Saturday have been a higher (more acceptable) total had not 17,342 shown up for Wednesday's friendly (or had that Wed friendly not been played at all)? I can certainly appreciated the usefulness of international friendly matches (and sellling tickets wherever and whenever a club can), but I think last week's Fire example underlines the point that more (soccer) isn't always better, and MLS itself struggles in some ways while it tries to expand (a friendly match v Club America for example) and maintain the regular product (a weekend MLS home match).
Yeah, we'll get right on that. We'll get the Pope to fiddle with the calendar again so we have more weekends between mid-March and late October. Last year: Mon-Friday.....42....680,701..16,207 Sat-Sunday....168..2,775,760..16,522 MLS TOTAL.....210..3,456,461..16,459 Mon-Thursday...37....548,858..14,834 Fri-Sunday....173..2,907,603..16,807 MLS TOTAL.....210..3,456,461..16,459
Except that's not the "larger goal." The "larger goal" is profitability. "sustained/useful MLS average home attendances" are a piece of that, and they're the window dressing, but, at the end of the day, a profitable club (actually, 18 profitable clubs) is the larger goal. And that isn't broken out into "profits made from the 15 home league matches + playoffs" and "other profits." You want your club to be profitable in hopes they'll stay around. (Doesn't always guarantee they will - there could be the promise of more profits somewhere else.) That's understandable. But, seriously, you can't control that. And pegging attendance at "acceptable" and "unacceptable" levels accomplishes nothing. Acceptable to whom? Now we're back to this - those of us who, each week, cobble together, add, subtract, multiply and divide the numbers and discuss what they mean, all seemingly have some ephemeral level of number that we feel is "acceptable," like a .269 batting average isn't, but .270, okay, I can deal with that. It's not our money. It's an overall club profitability conundrum. If they made money off the CA game (and I have no idea if they did or not), what's the problem? Chances are their budgets didn't call for 10,000 tickets sold to the 15 league games this year, so they've got to make up some ticket revenue somewhere. We can say "10,000 in Chicago? That's unacceptable!" and huff and snort and be righteously indignant, but the numbers don't exist to satisfy us. They're one indication of general overall economic health of a club, but unless it's unacceptable to the people writing the checks, you're just spinning your wheels doing rain dances hoping to boost the figure at the bottom of the boxscore over some arbitrary threshold. Well, you're up against it, scheduling-wise. It's not like America (or any big-name club) is just going to come whenever it's convenient for you. You gotta do what you gotta do. Sometimes it's inconvenient. But everybody's still trying to hit on the best way to do all these things.
I know it's an unpopular thought on these boards, but I can't help but wonder... We all know the new MLS markets of Toronto and Seattle are doing incredibly well. From reading these boards, it seems season ticket deposits are moving fast in new expansion cities too. But while these new markets are coming in and doing great and (along with DC and the LA sides) keeping league attendance high, it seems that some of the older markets have seriously declined over the years. The ones that have especially declined seem to have something in common. New England used to be one of the best-attended teams in the league in the early years. Colorado drew pretty well once (though always helped by a 4th of July jump). Chicago was the model of a passionate, knowledgable MLS fanbase until recent expansions. As the season goes along and it looks more and more like Chicago's heading for a big drop in Bridgeview. Dallas and Colorado continue to struggle more and more each year. New England's fanbase is slowly dwindling. People are quick to blame these franchise's struggles on any number of factors, and it is easy to blame one-off events (midweek friendly in Chicago this week) or poor management (Dallas, Colorado, New England) for the problems, but at some point I think you have to look at the parsimonious explanation. What do these markets have in common? These clubs' stadiums are all outside of what most folks would consider the city-proper area of town. Bridgeview, Gillette Stadium, Commerce City and Frisco simply are not Chicago, Boston, Denver or Dallas. I'll even throw in a quick nod to RSL - while they're still drawing well, it seems they're headed for a bit of an attendance drop in Sandy with an entertaining side. Is it just coincidence? I know people raise all kinds of objections to this. "It's so easy to get to X." "Y is near public transportation." "A huge chunk of the city's population actually lives close to suburb Z: there are people there." But maybe the story the numbers are bearing out is that there's a lot more to travel time influencing whether people want to go to these games. Regardless of how many suburban folks live in the area, maybe there are some psychological barriers. Maybe it's a little tougher to take a team playing in the burbs seriously. When you say you're going out for a night on the town in Dallas, you don't mean Frisco (even though a ton of people may live near Frisco); maybe it's a little tougher to get people jacked up about a night in Frisco. There's parsimonious explanation, of course. Maybe soccer clubs are just bound to have slowly declining fanbases in the United States - teams just sell seats for novelty, and as the years wear on fanbases die out. If that's the case, MLS is headed for trouble down the road when expansion slows. Let's hope that's not the case. I think the stadium locations are a bit of a problem. These markets aren't doomed, but they may just be at a disadvantage (need to do more advertising/marketing to get the same results). Maybe the league needs to look to avoid the farflung stadiums in the future (although I know Philly is headed for Chester), at least to the extent it is concerned with high attendance (I know other factors are important too, like cost of land). Just my thoughts as I see the trend continue every week.
I continue to blame the economy's thundering incompetence. My prediction for Dow Jones intraday low this year: 2.
those running the business of the league/team? right. we have no idea if they did or did not make money from the CA friendly. that's a complete unknown (to us). yet, it would be an interesting discussion on its own, or perhaps as part of a 2009 MLS Attendance Analysis: Week 8 thread. completely agree. and profitability (success as a business) is the key. certainly (one would imagine that) having 17K show up on a Wed and 10K show up on Sat (27K sold total) is better than that hypothetical situation were 14-18K show up for just one match (on Saturday). and again, we have no way of knowing what Saturday's Fire attendance would have been had they not played a Wed friendly in the same venue. but, i suppose by "acceptable" i was attempting to view it from the club/league's business perspective vs. what is reported/discussed in a 2009 MLS Attendance Analysis Weekly thread. there's give and take everywhere. this thread (as it should) looks at the MLS data. my initial post to include the mid-week friendly (and solid attendance) was just an attempt to remind all that the business runs (and perhaps in some ways runs against itself -- if looking at the data just listed in this thread) in complicated ways, and there's more to the business of MLS (and everybody reading this thread I would assume knows this) than just the weekly attendance figures, and the analysis thereof.
Could the attendance issue and problems we are seeing just be the reality that Soccer is going to struggle to gain a foothold in this country? All the debating on the board is useless when the reality is that people don't watch soccer in this country like they do the NFL. Is that bad? I don't think so. If the league can be profitable and successfull with 10,000 fans at games who cares. I have a league and a team i love, and i'll support them no matter what. Bigsoccer is not an accurate cross section of US population. The reality is MLS has not made it YET. But i think they will eventually. But i stand by the premise that part of what holds the league down is the parity and poor international results. There are no yankees or Real Madrids to be targets and heroes or villians for opposing fans. Last years champ has only one win and CUSA is 6-1 but still got eliminated by San Francisco last year in the CCL. The league just doesn't look good on paper. That will not gain the respect of the soccer knowledgeable people that should be MLS's main target audience. Original MLS teams also suffer from the early lean years of the league. Dallas, colorado, Columbus, revs, they paid the price so Philly, Vancouver, Seattle, TFC, etc, would be successfull. A galaxy FO staff member said it best when he said, if we were and expansion team today, we would have 20,000 ST and a 5000 member SG. LA probably would because they wouldn't have the baggage we have now. It's going to take time to rebuild from that poor start to the league, but it is doable, it will just take more time then i think people on BS would like. either way, the league is not going anywhere, teams can make money with 10,000 fans if they are in their own stadium, and time, and some defining moment for MLS, will bring out the fans. I think one great way would be if an MLS team won multiple CCL in a short time frame. that would really help bring out more of the hispanic fans than what we already have in the league.
I tend to disagree, at least in the case of Chicago. We know based on past experience that there are more than 10K people willing to make the trek to Bridgeview for the Fire. If the team is now only going to average 10K, something happened. What changed? Is it just the economy? Is it too many ties? What is it? But there was/is a catalyst that if identified could be corrected.