March has given way to April, and the 2012 MLS season rolls right along. In spite of the early start to the season the sub 10k number is very low, which is highly encouraging. There were a few things that were asked for in last weeks thread that I think I can deliver. The median of medians should be simple as I already have the medians saved. I also created a new sheet that can give me the difference between last years and this years average through X games easier, but it also gives me the all time average for that game number for each team as well. With some teams it is easy to pick out why some game numbers have historically higher averages, and then other trends seem a bit odd. Remember in this thread we discuss the: (AAQ = Attendance Analysis Quotient. This figure is an overall attendance assessment, calculated from the weighted values of average attendance, median attendance, <10K percentage and >20K percentage. A lower figure represents a better attendance performance.) This is a slight change from Andy's old formula which used simple ordinal values and provided a full ranking point separation for two numbers that may have been within a percentage. This ordinal system did not allow for fine differences to be seen, and may have painted a somewhat skewed view of the numbers (though to be honest there is not much difference in the two end of season sets). The formula to find the weighted value for each column is: Take the annual value and subtract it from the Max value for it's column. Then take that result and divide it by the (Max-Min) for its column. For example, for the average column 17869 is the max 13756 is the min 4113 is the difference To calculate the derived value for 2010 Subtract 16675 from 17869 to get 1194. Divide 1194 by 4113 then mulitply by 100* to get 29 *Note that this step is new as some people thought whole numbers would be easier to read. MLS Attendance is based on tickets distributed not tickets scanned. Therefore if a team sells or distributes X number of tickets, then X is the attendance for that match. Even if 0 people showed up for whatever reason, X would still be the official attendance. There are a number of reasons actual attendance may be lower or higher than the announced. Update to Perceived Discussion: The week 4 thread spawned some discussion that was similar to some of the old that can't be right arguments that took place in threads past. I really would like for the perceived attendance discussion to be okay, there have been some interesting points raised and some anecdotal comments that were worth pursuing. So with that in mind, please do not throw out "actuals" without identifying and linking to your source. The numbers are fair game to discuss if there is a link, preferably a non-social media link unless it is a team feed. Also remain civil, no name calling, no hostility when a legitimate question/concern is raised. Thanks lets see how this goes.
So again a week with 9 games has ended, and a week with 9 games is on the horizon. After having the first true midweek matches last week, we are back to an all weekend slate as well. Good mix of teams hosting this week, so would not be surprised to see the average climb again. Last Weeks Games: Code: Real Salt Lake 20191 FC Dallas 11043 Montréal 23120 Columbus 11516 Kansas City 20323 San Jose 10525 DC United 15651 Real Salt Lake 16870 Portland 20438 [B]Total 149677[/B] [B][COLOR="Red"]Average 16631[/COLOR][/B] No Milestones were reached this week. In the comparitive, I have added home game count so that should clear up a lot of questions. As MLSFAN123 pointed out in last weeks discussion until teams are 5-6 games into their home season the comparitive numbers really don't mean much unless there is a corresponding trend. Comparison to This Point Last Season and All-Time Averages: Code: ----Team---- Played Current Last Diff Alltime Diff Chicago 1 18075 12157 48.7% 15529 16.4% Chivas USA 3 11853 14845 -20.2% 15863 -25.3% Colorado 2 13949 13498 3.3% 13971 -0.2% Columbus 2 14857 12428 19.5% 15238 -2.5% DC United 3 15045 20935 -28.1% 17194 -12.5% FC Dallas 3 14717 14476 1.7% 12203 20.6% Houston 0 0 0 0.0% 17327 0.0% Los Angeles 3 22263 25239 -11.8% 22067 0.9% Montréal 2 41016 New 0.0% New 0.0% New England 1 12925 12914 0.1% 15610 -17.2% Philadelphia 2 18132 18809 -3.6% 18724 -3.2% Portland 3 20438 18627 9.7% 18827 8.6% Red Bull NY 2 17220 17323 -0.6% 17159 0.0% Real Salt Lake 4 18554 16672 11.3% 16828 10.3% San Jose 3 14289 9910 44.2% 12820 11.5% Seattle 3 38438 36287 5.9% 35329 8.8% Sporting KC 3 18420 18953 -2.8% 11386 61.8% Toronto FC 2 19507 19527 -0.1% 20264 -3.7% Vancouver 2 20197 21555 -6.3% 20412 -1.1% Overall - 19576 17856 9.6% 15739 24.4%
Okay, first lets see if I can get this week posted right without the fubar and a half I had last week . The numbers really are holding up quite nicely, it would be great to be able to say that the league has turned a corner. But I think Ole's numbers may be abit better for being able to make that statement. Seattle still moves the average quite a bit on a weekly basis, but I think on the whole the impact is much less than it was in 2009. From the table above we can see that the league average is really stout, and it is not just a team or two driving it. Through week 4 MLS has played 44 matches or 13.6% of the season. Of those 44 matches, 31 have topped the 15k mark, and the standard deviation is 8947. Also because it was asked for the median of team medians is 18103. Current Season: Code: Current Average Median <10k >20k AvgPts MedPts <10kPts >20kPts AAAQ AAAQRnk Date 1996 26894 25841 9.1% 68.2% 0 0 19 0 19 1 5/5 1997 17431 12774 27.3% 27.3% 74 98 69 70 311 13 4/20 1998 15826 13323 11.5% 23.1% 87 94 25 77 283 8 4/18 1999 14515 14190 38.5% 19.2% 97 87 100 83 368 17 4/17 2000 14186 13036 23.1% 19.2% 100 96 57 83 337 15 4/15 2001 14871 15124 19.0% 9.5% 95 80 46 100 321 14 4/28 2002 17965 14127 5.3% 26.3% 70 88 8 71 238 5 4/20 2003 15306 15207 20.0% 25.0% 91 80 49 74 293 11 5/10 2004 16480 15007 25.0% 40.0% 82 81 63 48 274 7 5/1 2005 15269 12499 23.1% 15.4% 91 100 57 90 339 16 4/30 2006 17604 17786 15.4% 30.8% 73 60 36 64 233 4 4/29 2007 15391 14173 11.1% 18.5% 91 87 24 85 287 10 5/3 2008 15086 14919 17.2% 27.6% 93 82 41 69 285 9 4/24 2009 15290 14411 16.1% 19.4% 91 86 38 83 298 12 4/18 2010 17582 14843 12.1% 30.3% 73 82 27 65 247 6 4/24 2011 17856 18127 9.5% 33.3% 71 58 20 59 208 3 4/16 2012 19576 18705 2.3% 40.9% 58 53 0 47 158 2 4/7 Current Average Median <10k >20k AvgPts MedPts <10kPts >20kPts AAAQ AAAQRnk Date Historical End of Season: Code: EOS Average Median <10k >20k AvgPts MedPts <10kPts >20kPts AAAQ AAAQRnk Date 1996 17410 15093 21.9% 26.3% 11 44 57 20 132 5 9/22 1997 14606 12733 25.0% 16.3% 79 85 67 78 310 13 9/28 1998 14312 11871 26.6% 16.1% 86 100 73 79 338 14 9/27 1999 14282 12973 32.3% 15.1% 87 81 93 85 346 15 10/10 2000 13756 12690 34.4% 12.5% 100 86 100 100 386 16 9/9 2001 14961 13431 26.6% 17.7% 71 73 73 70 286 11 9/9 2002 15821 14108 17.1% 18.6% 50 61 40 65 215 7 9/22 2003 14900 13719 23.3% 18.0% 72 68 61 68 270 10 10/26 2004 15549 13223 24.7% 25.3% 56 77 66 26 225 8 10/17 2005 15112 12619 27.1% 17.7% 67 87 75 70 298 12 10/16 2006 15426 14113 19.3% 18.2% 59 61 48 67 235 9 10/15 2007 16767 15353 8.2% 29.7% 27 40 9 0 75 2 10/21 2008 16460 15188 11.0% 24.8% 34 42 19 28 124 4 10/26 2009 16037 14686 14.7% 20.9% 45 51 32 51 178 6 10/25 2010 16675 15332 7.5% 22.5% 29 40 7 42 117 3 10/16 2011 17869 17639 5.6% 28.1% 0 0 0 9 9 1 10/23 EOS Average Median <10k >20k AvgPts MedPts <10kPts >20kPts AAAQ AAAQRnk Date
I appreciate that this discussion is in play this year. I've got a sort of a strange one... I've been to two of the RFK games and watched the other one on TV. I can say all three have been multiple thousands below my perception based on many years of attending games and judging the crowds. My best guess is that there are fewer no-shows or giveaways this year. I'm wondering if there is something else going on. More people staying in their seats all game perhaps. This isn't exactly to discuss this year's DCU attendance but to perhaps offer a positive that more people are actually at the games. Anyone have any thoughts about this. Is anyone noticing this at other stadiums or is it more of the perceptions being lower than the announced attendance?
I, too, have been going to games at RFK since 1996. I, too, was stunned at how low the official attendance was on opening day (the only game I've attended this season). It's not just you.
Are there tickets available? Hmmm. I was just going by the club's tweet today, they themselves said it was sold out.
Sell outs typically mean that a certain percentage of tickets have been sold. Not that all have been. This is standard practise.
2011 Games Played: 306 Total Attnd: 5,467,880 Average Attnd: 17,869 Median Attnd: 17,639 Median-33%: 11,765 Median+33%: 23,530 <MED-33%: 56 / 18.3% >MED+33%: 36 / 11.8% Average %CAP: 81.0% Median %CAP: 85.7% Games <70%: 86 / 28.1% Games >90%: 139 / 45.4% 2012 Games Played: 44 Total Attnd: 861,357 Average Attnd: 19,576 Median Attnd: 18,705 Median-33%: 12,476 Median+33%: 24,952 <MED-33%: 6 / 13.6% >MED+33%: 5 / 11.4% Average %CAP: 83.7% Median %CAP: 90.0% Games <70%: 10 / 20.0% Games >90%: 22 / 50.0% NOTES 1. For information regarding 2011 stadium capacities go HERE. 2. Per 2012 MLS Team Media Guides the following are the standard capacities for each team's regular home stadium: CHI (20,000); CHV (18,800); COL (18,086); CLB (20,145); DCU (19,647); FCD (20,500); HOU (22,000); LAG (27,000); MON (20,341); NER (20,000); NYR (25,000); PHI (18,500); POR (20,438); RSL (20,213); SJE (10,525); SEA (38,500); SKC (18,467); TFC (21,140); VAN (21,000) 3. The following are capacity exceptions to the norms above: MON 3/17 (58,500); SJE 3/17 (41,915); MON 4/7 (58,500) 4. Some listed capacities are "seated only" and teams may have sold/had SRO attendance over this amount, thus putting the %CAP over 100% for certain games. For calculating the average and median %CAP for all games these 100%+ numbers were treated as 100%.
I apologize for last week and creating a thread jump. I was just trying to make a point to a previous poster. Using the word "Actual" without quotations or Actual in general was a mistake. I knew that perceived posts on these threads were usually ignored after a page and didnt think that posters would continue the conversation.
I have two theories. Remember, the memorandum leaked to the San Diego Union Tribune reported the number of tickets each team sold and the number of complimentary tickets each team had given away -- that should have equalled the number of "tickets distributed", but it didn't. Most MLS teams were adding a lot of fictitious tickets to the number of tickets distributed when they publicly announced their attendance. In the case of DC United, they padded the tickets distributed number by about 1,500 per game. I'm sure MLS is still giving away comp tickets (although as a league it may be less than in 2005), but I would hope they have stopped simply padding the numbers. If they have, crowds that may look identical to what you remember even a few years ago would be announced as smaller than they once were. The "ghosts" may be gone. A second factor may also be at work. While comp tickets have always been considered "tickets distributed" for purposes of announced attendance, I suspect they tend to generate more no-shows than tickets people have purchased. However, if a greater percentage of the comps are used for a given game, the crowd will look bigger without changing the announced attendance. Put those together, and it's very possible to have a bigger crowd in the stadium without seeing it reflected in the announced attendance numbers which may in fact, be somewhat lower than before thanks to the eliminated of the ghosts. If we had turnstile counts we could verify that, but, alas, we don't. Here's the well - worn link to the San Diego Union Tribune story: http://www.utsandiego.com/sports/soccer/20060927-9999-lz1s27goal.html
It would be ideal if we knew just how many tickets were actually sold. Free tickets are completely meaningless for determing the "actual" attendance. Of course, MLS will never give out all of the breakdownss dealing with tickets distributed, tickets sold and turnstile attendance.
Let me try and illustrate what I think is going on at DC United and explain why announced attendance is dropping even though the crowds look as big, if not bigger, than before. First, here is the data from the 2005 memorandum leaked to the San Diego Union Tribune (which I’ve rounded): DC United 2005 Announced Attendance Tickets Sold – 12,000 Complimentary Tickets – 3,100 Ficticous Tickets – 1,500 Total Announced Attendance – 16,600 Accurate turnstile data is hard to come by. There has only been one report I know of where an MLS team released announced attendance , paid attendance and turnstile counts – the Columbus Dispatch reported those numbers for the first eight games of the Crew’s 2008 season, which we’ve all talked about many times. Here’s the link again: http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/sports/2008/07/17/crew17.ART_ART_07-17-08_C1_O2AP95Q.html That data shows that turnstile counts were 96.5% of paid attendance. That suggests usage of complimentary tickets may be very low (and, of course, the fictional tickets were a fiction). If DC United was comparable in 2005, they were announcing an average attendance of 16,600, but there were only 11,580 in the stands based on paid attendance of 12,000 x .965. My guess is that may be pretty accurate. I submit not so long ago the gap between what was announced and the turnstile count (that is, people you could see in the stands) was large – perhaps 5,020 per game in the case of DC United. People were being conditioned to look at a crowd in the stadium and associate it with a much larger attendance number and, for long time fans, those “eyeball tests” are still locked in their memories. They see comparable crowds now with lower announced attendance and it doesn’t compute. But let’s now make two adjustments to illustrate how turnstile counts can increase even as announced attendance declines: First, let’s just subtract out the fictitious tickets – people can’t use tickets that don’t exist, after all. That would mean DC United should have announced 15,100 (the actual number of tickets distributed) and the turnstile count would have remained 11,580. (That is, .965 times the 12,000 tickets sold). The turnstile count is now “only” 3,520 less than announced attendance. Announced attendance goes down in this example, but note the number of tickets sold (12,000), given away (3,100) and turnstile count (11,580) are all unchanged. We just took the fictitious ghosts out of the announced attendance number. Now, let’s assume that while the number of tickets distributed hasn’t changed, more are sold and fewer are given away. In other words, split the 3,100 of complimentary tickets, assuming 1,550 are now sold and 1,550 are given away. Since sold tickets are more likely to be used, if ticket sales go up to 13,550 and comps drop to 1,550, the turnstile count goes up – to 13,075. Announced attendance (without the fictitious tickets) remains 15,100. We now have an example where the turnstile count goes up (from 11,580 to 13,075), even as the tickets distributed remains the same (15,100) and the announced attendance goes down (from 16,600 to 15,100). The crowd is bigger because more of the distributed tickets are sold (and hence much more likely to be used), but the elimination of the fictional ghosts makes the announced attendance smaller. That’s what I think is going on at DC United, and perhaps Chicago and some other older markets too.
So with these thousands of free tickets given away for every game, how do I go about getting some? I know the Galaxy give away hundreds of tickets to every game to AYSO league champions from all over L.A. county and let them march on the field before the game (smart marketing actually) but I don't know of any other comps the Galaxy give out.
No offence but the league is a totally different place than it was in 2005 ... that San Diego article might as well have been about a totally different league, it has no relevance to today's MLS really. Same with the Columbus article from 2008 ... irrelevant. Caveat being there are still a handful of teams that are operating as if it was still 2005 or 2008 so it may still have some relevance to them ... but to the league as a whole it isn't important.
Obviously the raw numbers may not have a place in today's league. For the teams that may still be operating under that model of reporting, it is useful as a starting point.
Indeed, the example is trying to illustrate the impact those changes may have on perceived attendance. I don't think people's eyes are playing tricks on them regarding these DC United crowds. As you say, the league is different today. In some original markets, I think the reporting is different (less padding) and more tickets are sold instead of given away (meaning more of the distributed tickets are being used), which means it is very possible to have slightly bigger crowds even though the announced attendance is lower than in 2005.
Just to jump in here, the MLS counting it as "tickets distributed" when it comes to attendance is not unique to the MLS, as this article from Yahoo talks about: It goes on to discuss the empty seats in the NBA arenas. Article here: http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/blog/pu...ey-winning-in-attendance-fan-e?urn=nhl,123904
I have a blended theory on this. A. There was an element of padding, ghosts, comps ala the SDT 2005 article and a dash of B. With the new lease agreement signed by the city and United there, for whatever reason, may be a disincentive to report higher crowds. Of course this is just me throwing something at a wall to see if it sticks. I apologize if this often lambasted topic is out of bounds since I have no data at all to back this up.
May be we can get some BS posters to volunteer and to go to every weekday and weekend games and count number of warm bodies attending MLS games in every market. This way we can have an accurate account of how many fans are attending the games..