? Not sure why this is directed to me, I've been complaining about the effects of scheduling on attendance. Did you mean Mr Gagliardi?
Sadly, that’s me. There is already a butt in seat thread in General. https://www.bigsoccer.com/threads/mls-2019-attendance-butts-in-seats-talk-welcome.2103767/
I was there sitting in the pouring rain in shorts and a jersey. Front row behind the ad boards sitting next to Fire fan. Should’ve been easy to spot on the telecast.
This Orlando match looks like a Serie A match attendance wise. Ultras packed behind one goal and empty everywhere else. I'm half expecting to hear random firecracker explosions.
This weekend's attendance summary: 22,001 in Los Angeles [LAFC] (Thursday) 15,559 in Montreal 15,949 in Sandy [Salt Lake] 15,232 in San Jose 18,540 in Chester [Philadelphia] 19,600 in St. Paul 18,691 in Kansas City 15,811 in Houston 22,341 in Orlando 18,495 in Harrison [New York] 15,135 in Frisco [Dallas] 19,015 in Carson [LAG]
Justin played himself out of Columbus after that. Don't know if it was that his confidence was broken on Orlando or not.
Ah, a familiar theme . . . Let's refresh what we have learned over the years: In an October, 2016 story entitled “MLS math doesn't always add up”, the LA Times examined MLS attendance figures. The story noted, “none of the top North American leagues use an old-school turnstile count, meaning none of the attendance figures they release reflect the number of people who actually attend the events.” The story continued to explain why US leagues nonetheless like to release the typically higher "tickets distributed" counts, noting, “There's a bit of a game being played in all sports," said Steven A. Bank, a professor of business law at UCLA who has written and lectured extensively on soccer. "The stats on the number of people at games is a proxy for . . . the popularity of the sport." If you are analyzing MLS, knowing how many tickets are sold – how many people are willing to plunk down their cold hard cash for a ticket – is obviously a solid indicator of both a league’s popularity and financial health. Likewise, the number of tickets scanned at the stadium tells us how many fans were willing to use those tickets and go to the games – another good gage of a league’s popularity and health. But again, MLS, like other major U.S. leagues, doesn’t release those numbers – just the tickets it distributed. To go further, we have to guess how many of those tickets were sold and used. From time to time information does come out. For example, the CSL study for DC United’s new stadium noted “the average MLS paid attendance was 16,159 in 2013. The top third of MLS teams averaged 21,693 paid attendees per game in 2013.” CSL, “Cost Benefit Analysis of the Soccer Stadium Development Act of 2014”, Page 25. MLS announced average attendance in 2013 was 18,594, meaning by my math average paid attendance was about 13% lower than the announced tickets that were distributed that year. But we also know that MLS, in a moment of candor, provided some good information that the freebies are decreasing. Again, the LA Times noted in 2016, “A decade ago the San Diego Union-Tribune reported nearly 30% of the tickets distributed for MLS games were free, a figure the league does not dispute. A former official with Chivas USA, a franchise the league bought and folded in 2014, said the club was still giving away at least that many comps just five years ago. That's an issue MLS has tried recently to address. Howard Handler, the league's chief marketing officer, said the number of comp tickets distributed has declined by an average of 20% over the last two years. It now accounts for about 9% of announced attendance, he said.” https://www.latimes.com/sports/soccer/la-sp-soccer-baxter-20161029-story.html Even now, it’s likely the number of “comps” probably is greater for expansion teams or teams that are “re-branding”, but, still, league-wide it appears to be about 10%, give or take, which is a huge improvement from 2006. Scanned “turnstile counts” are even harder to find, but, again, we occasionally get that information too. Years ago the Columbus Dispatch reported some data for the Crew (which was much lower than what was announced), but more recently that LA Times story reported Orlando City’s turnstile count was also a lot lower in its first two seasons. It noted, “The club claimed home attendance of 532,500 this [2016] season at Camping World Stadium although the City of Orlando, which owns the facility, released figures Friday that showed the number of tickets scanned — the modern-day equivalent of a turnstile count — was 151,060 short of the team's total, a difference of 8,886 per game. In 2015, Orlando City's first season in the league, the city's attendance figures for the first 12 games were more than 17% lower than the team's numbers.” For a new team, again, it isn’t a great surprise that it gave out a lot of comps in its tickets distributed, but a lot of those comps apparently weren’t used. In other words, for those who thought the Orlando City crowds looked smaller in 2015 and 2016 than what was announced, they were right. They were. What does all that mean for the “analysis” portion of this tread? It’s a reminder that like all things MLS, attendance data only gives us part of the picture. That does not make the data meaningless, but we should remember it also does not reflect sales or tickets scanned and we shouldn’t cite it as such. To dig deeper into sales and turnstile counts, we have to make an educated guess based on additional information we do get (or dig out) from time to time. The problem with the “it looked smaller on TV” posts isn’t that they are wrong, but rather they really don’t advance the analysis much IMO. Again, in many cases, the announced number of tickets distributed likely is higher than both the number of tickets sold and the number of tickets used. The league has fessed up on this some time ago. It’s not news. Not to be harsh, but since we all know it’s true, to me the more interesting discussion is to answer the question, “so what?” If the sold tickets are indeed about 10% less than the announced number, why does it matter? For years that "crowd looks smaller on TV" argument was used to bootstrap the idea that MLS was a Ponzi scheme doomed to fail. Clearly, that wasn’t true then, and it isn’t true now IMO. So why should I or any fan care if the actual crowd in the stadium is smaller than the number of tickets distributed? Very few people have attempted to make that case over the years, but it's worth discussing if someone can make a compelling case. That will take some work, which is best done in other threads where the argument can be the focus of the thread IMO. It's also why here in this thread we simply accept the numbers for what they are – and adjust our analysis to the extent we can when making broader arguments with the data elsewhere.
I'm not disputing these estimates of the number of comp tickets distributed, but do want to note that in my DC market they don't seem to be surfacing in the traditional ways. I had kids involved in youth soccer for a decade or more, and was never offered any free tickets through that. There's a modest amount of game day scalping (or was until paper tickets went away), but not nearly the amount you'd expect if there were thousands of free tickets circulating. Maybe it;s all happening on stubhub and the like, I don't know. I'd also remindTV viewers of how late people arrive for games, at least in DC. It takes a solid 20 minutes after kickoff for the crowd to fill in. Even with real sellouts the seats are less than half filled at kickoff.
The other part of this I would add is prospective owners of the league I will guarantee you see the true numbers and based on how so many want into the league, the true numbers dont seem to bother them one bit. So really none of us should care either then. Sure its more fun to watch a game with a full, lively stadium atmosphere but other then that the only people who should care are the owners and the true numbers dont seem to bother them at all.
So far it is a swing and a miss for me on the CPL. We're 4 weeks into the season and average attendance is currently at 5,815. That's pretty close to where I was expecting it to be at this point, but I missed on a few of the teams: https://soccerstadiumdigest.com/2019-cpl-attendance/ RankTeamAvgGames 1Forge FC9,7953 2Valour FC6,7313 3HFX Wanderers FC6,2001 4FC Edmonton4,2381 5Pacific FC3,3743 6Cavalry FC2,7282 7York9 FC00TOTALS5,81513 My biggest miss seems to be the Forge, who, although they are averaging 10k, are still getting a major bump from their 19k first game and seem to be settling into 5k in their other games. I was honestly expecting them to remain around 10k, but 5k is still a respectable number. My next biggest miss is Valour FC, whom I expected to be down in the 2k-3k range, but are so far sticking to 5k in their non-debut game. I also wasn't expecting Calvary FC to be so low, but I didn't know that they would completely mess up their first game in pretty much every way possible. Oops.
I really don't understand with today's technology, that a system is not in place that measures true attendance in any stadium. Just a few pictures of the stadium should provide a reliable estimate of actual in-game attendance. That is the number the in-stadium sponsors are most concerned about. That is the number that provides the clearest indication of the health and long-term sustainability of any sporting franchise. In Chicago, on occasion (when the crowd is especially low), I have tried to count the number of actual people sitting and watching the match. A couple of times, that number has been below 2,000. The announced attendance was always over 10,000. That tells me that certain clubs are much more generous with their announced attendance than others. I know that this thread's primary purpose is reported attendance and I really appreciate these statistics and the discussions regarding these. I respect the desire for data reporting consistency. In my teenage years, I was a huge Chicago Sting fan. The owner of my favorite hot dog stand would always ask me two questions when I stopped by after a Sting match. Did the Sting win, and how many people were there to watch. Nothing about the announced attendance, just a question regarding how many people were there. Two very important questions, even 30 or so years ago.
There is technology that tells how many people are in the stadiums and it has existed for a very long time. It used to be (and in some cases still is) done by turnstiles. Now most of the time it is done by scanning tickets. The software used to scan the tickets would provide real time stats on how many people have entered the stadium. Most leagues choose to not publicly release this info.
Back in the late 90s I worked for a company that had a Nuggets luxury box and it was one of the numerous years they they stunk. I was able to get the luxery box for myself and a couple of friends due to a total lack of interest from anyone else in the company. I got a printed report of the announced attendance and actual attendance. The announced attendance was around 13500 and the actual was 2100. I know there were many no shows due to their performance but shows they have and use these numbers. Also as a side note, back in the 70s they were reporting paid vs actual attendance in the local news papers in France for Ligue 1.
Not only does the technology exist, but it is being used by teams to determine the size of the crowd and their demographics. Perhaps you’ve seen those super high definition 360 “fancam” images teams put out where people can find themselves in the stands. That’s not being done for the fans. The company that takes the pics has the ability to use those pictures to determine the age, gender, and race of the people in the pics.