The Hauptman Fire couldn't pay me enough to go to watch them in person. I have more fun with the other sick bastards that frequent this place commenting on the game(s) in the PBP threads.
Pretty conceited of him to do that. What exactly is he king of anyway? King of whining and bitching at the ref? Sent from my XT1049 using Tapatalk
It's been THREE years since I attended a home game. I don't see that changing anytime soon. #ThanksAndi
Oh really? I always thought TP was closer to 20k seats. My bad for not googling capacity and attendance. It looked pretty fill from my vantage point. But then again I did add "make an optometrist appointment" to my calendar while waiting for game to start
During my last year of season tickets, we were in the Quaker Corner, and I noticed that our seats actually moved a bit and when there were tags on the seats for "renewals" that the spacing was controlled in a way where the section had people in every row, but there were spaces between sets of tickets. Four together, six spaces, another three together, etc. Where I think that in the old days, sports teams would simply sell the best tickets in a price range, and leave big blocks of unsold tickets open, I believe that some teams (including the Fire) are using a ticket/seat algorithm to space the sold tickets out in a way to make the stadium look as full as possible. I don't have hard evidence of this, but I saw enough anecdotally to convince me that that is what is going on. That year was the first year of STH cards that then printed out your tickets at the gate. I'm not being critical of the practice, mind you, just pointing out that they are much more sophisticated now and that it could be harder to simply eye ball the crowd.
That actually makes sense but I would be pissed off if I got a worse seat just to make the team look good on tv
Just rewatched the game and I still don't see too much wooden spoon quality play (more mediocre, mid-table play). I'm gonna run some stats and come back in couple hours with more info. I will say that we need to stop the stupid giveaways and do better finishing (as always).
ties at home to the 14th place team in the league missing two of its best players is the definition of wooden spoon quality. it's the truly terrible team that figures out ways to drop points even when they put out a decent match.
I thought the Fire played well based on their talent and potential. So in other words, they looked good for a team that sucks. They strung together a nice cross and one touch goal. They had a few shots on goals. Passing still seemed sloppy and slow, their touch was off, not able to maintain possession in the final third or create enough chances. If Portland were full strength I'm confident they would've lost. They don't seem at all any better than last year and in the games that we played well last year we looked a hell of a lot better than this year. Last year thumping Toronto and a full strength Dallas were accomplishments that made me get excited. A tie against a weakened Portland team during a winless slump doesn't do much for me.
Not sure if this is apples-to-apples but you can see on TicketMaster that for the Chivas-Atlas friendly at TP they've only sold about 1/3 of the seats so far. But the prices are ridiculously high so maybe that is a part of it. (For the America-Leon friendly ticketmaster doesn't have the dots showing what seats are available and what are sold so there is no way to tell ticket sales for that one)
Well, I have not heard that there was a Chivas-Atlas friendly (not that I am going). You are right on all accounts. The Skyway (other than the far corners) and Section 107 are pretty much sold out, but the rest is about 1/3 sold. $45.00-150.00 seems a bit high to me.
I have heard the Fire and a few other MLS clubs do utilize a ticket algorithm to help make the stadium look more full. If you only sell 9-10,000 it doesn't matter much, but at 14-15K it can be effective.
At what point do they put mannequins and or cardboard people cut outs. You know...to make the stadium "look" more full.
Are you seriously implying that they don't???? Those soccer moms and Dippin' Dots kids are totally mannequins. What I am surprised about is that they have not cleared us all out of the Skyway by giving us Corner Kick tickets to make the lower level "look full". Oh, wait, that would be offering something to season ticket holders. Can't have that, now.