MLS Attendance Analysis: Week 15

DCU - 17,123

 

You may or may not be correct, but my feeling is that most casual fans bought tickets to MTL's playoff run in CONCACAF rather than MLS games. I mean if you add CONCACAF games to their attendance they would be one of the tops 1/3 of the league right now.

 

I hope this is good for the future of the Whitecaps! I wish they would do one or two games a year with the whole stadium open!

 

They won't do that until they decide which of the ladies on the Canadian national team to sign as their next Designated Player....clearly they are the big draw here.

 

Canada now looks like USA in 1990's when girls had much bigger draw than boys. Some of Canadian MLS teams should start thinking about forming NWSL teams.

 

kidding aside....we get very big crowds here when our women's national hockey team has big games too.....but various attempts over the years to get people to show up on a regular basis to support pro (or, really, semi pro) leagues with the same players have ended in complete failure.....pretty sure a soccer league would meet the same fate.

 

Was that capacity or above capacity or maybe even under capacity?

 

According to wikipedia:
54,320 (Canadian football)
21,000 (Soccer)
54,000 (2015 FIFA Women's World Cup, est.)
That could very well be capacity, because they may have needed to change some Canadian football seating into media platforms.

 

RSL - 19,155

 

The Whitecaps are not in a position to open the stadium to full capacity (~54K) and know for sure that it would sell out. Hopefully I will be proven wrong some day soon, but we are not Seattle. I can imagine circumstances that my change that viz. Christiano Ronaldo coming to town with his new MLS team, Steven Gerrard and the LA Galaxy if they were to meet in the Conference final in Vancouver or something along these lines. Right now, they are slowly and steadily building the fan base and season ticket holder base. I'd argue they are doing a reasonably good job of it too.

 

Why does it need to sell out? Getting 40k for a game against the Sounders seems like it would be a win.

 

156 games - 3,243,676 total - 20,793 average

 

If there were a game to open up the full stadium it would definitely be the Sounders. It would be great if they could get 40K for a 'Caps v Sounders match.

I'm going to go off on a tangent here: I was a Sounders ticket holder for their first two seasons in MLS and have held Whitecaps season tickets since their first day in MLS. I've lived 14 years in Vancouver and 8 years in Seattle and horror of horrors, like both teams. I am still somewhat surprised that the Whitecaps haven't reached the same level as the Sounders in term of fan support. Both cities have strong soccer cultures in terms of participation and history of supporting their professional teams. Vancouver seems to have a higher level of Premiership snobbery because there are more people of British derivation in BC than in WA or so it seems. Both cities have press that are non-soccer hostile. In fact, I'd argue Vancouver's press is even less hostile to soccer than Seattle's press. Vancouver doesn't have as many hacks who came up through the ranks on the NFL and MLB in the local media. There is also less competition for sports share-of-wallet in Vancouver than in Seattle. However, week night games in Vancouver may not reach 20K. When I sell my tickets in the after market; pricing is usually at face value; and, the 'Caps sales reps are still hawking season ticket packages at home games in the corridors. All this tells me that the standard demand for tickets in Vancouver is far below Seattle's. And quite frankly, that's a bit of a disappointment.

 

I honestly expected more as well. I think two big differences were the involvement of the Seahawks and that Seattle was competitive from the first game and never looked back.

Regarding the Seahawks, I got my 2009 season tickets for $150 or thereabouts. My friend was a season ticket holder for the Seahawks and his agent offered him half price season tickets. He passed the info on to me, I contacted his rep and asked if I could buy them at that price, the rep said yes and so I bought 6.

Regarding being competitive, some of their early signings included Freddie Ljungberg and Kasey Keller, a local hero. They made it clear from day 1 this would be a competitive team with owners willing to spend money.

Vancouver has had neither of those advantages. I think people in Vancouver are much like people in Seattle in that they have to be coaxed and persuaded to attend a sports event because it is not as deeply engrained in our fabric as it is in some other cities that are, in my opinion, much better sports-minded towns.

 

TotalMLS.com

 

Based on those numbers (and recognizing they said Week 15 instead of Week 16), the weekly average has been above 20,000 more often than it has been below 20,000. Not many would have predicted that a few years ago.

 

I am confused at what week we're in.

 

Move Week 14!

 

That's right.

 

What happens is this: They sell 40K, but they sell fewer to the higher priced seats. The visuals are terrible and the profits are actually not as good (opening more sections means paying more security, concession and cleanup staff).

 

As playoff races heat up and Lampard, Gerrard, and possibly Pirlo join the league in July, breaking 21,000 average is starting to look realistic, no?

 

Do we know a start date for either Lampard or Gerrard yet?