What can MLS learn from J-League?

Discussion in 'MLS: News & Analysis' started by Old Man!, Sep 19, 2004.

  1. clevfutbol23

    clevfutbol23 New Member

    Feb 15, 2002
    Ohio
    could you please post your source on the China and korean numbers? I am really interested in Asian Football and would like to look into the chinese and korean leagues more thouroughly (sp?). I am also wondering what the competition in these two leagues are like when compared to the J League?? thanks alot.
     
  2. Komorowski redded

    Dec 26, 2005

    it's wrong.

    kashiwa reysol have a brazilian goalkeeper who was naturalized in japan.
    http://www.reysol.co.jp/players/2005/image/16.jpg
     
  3. Elninho

    Elninho Member+

    Sacramento Republic FC
    United States
    Oct 30, 2000
    Sacramento, CA
    Club:
    Los Angeles Galaxy
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Those Asian attendance numbers show us that the image of huge crowds week-in and week-out isn't quite as impressive as it sounded before. Yes, there are two J-League clubs averaging 40k, and two more that did better than anyone in MLS last year (though it is worth noting that the Galaxy could easily have sold quite a few more tickets if the HDC were larger)... but for the most part attendances are similar to MLS attendances, even taking away MLS doubleheaders. In other words, only a few prominent clubs are actually doing significantly better at the gate than MLS. Even the league champions only averaged a bit under 16k!

    In South Korea and China, we again see a few very well-supported clubs, but there are top-flight teams with truly embarrassing attendance numbers...
     
  4. AndyMead

    AndyMead Homo Sapien

    Nov 2, 1999
    Seat 12A
    Club:
    Sporting Kansas City
    I don't know if the 8 Korean teams in K1 play in the neighboring built-for-the World Cup stadia, but here's the attendance and capacity:

    K1-League
    Incheon 23,436 - 52,179 (SSS)
    FC Seoul 22,010 - 63,961 (track)
    Suwon 18,659 - 43,188 (SSS)
    Daejeon 15,592 - 40,407 (SSS)
    Ulsan 12,719 - 43,550 (SSS)
    Daegu 11,780 - 68,014 (track - 2003 University Games)
    Pohang 8,265 - not in World Cup
    Busan 7,366 - 55,982 (track - 2003 Asian Games)
    Gwangju 6,282 - 42,880 (SSS)
    Seongnam 5,822 - not in World Cup
    Cheonbuk 5,725 - not in World Cup
    Chunnam 5,267 - not in World Cup
    Bucheon 3,431 - not in World Cup

    The other two World Cup stadiums were
    Jeonju - 42,391 (SSS) - but a good 40 minutes out of town if I recall
    Seogwipo - 42,256 (SSS) - absolutely inaccessible (trust me, I went) on the wrong side of Jeju Island an hour from the airport, since destroyed by a Cyclone.

    Comparing the averages with capacities makes the K-League look like a MetroStars/Wizards/Revs/Rapids disaster that can't be fixed. Given the expense of building these stadia, there's no way that someone is going to come along and build a bunch of 15k stadia for these teams.

    I'm guessing the majority of these games have horrible atmospheres compared to what they'd be if they were played in more reasonably sized venues.
     
  5. kenntomasch

    kenntomasch Member+

    Sep 2, 1999
    Out West
    Club:
    FC Tampa Bay Rowdies
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    It should also be noted that anyone who doesn't attend J-League games regularly and yet tries to tell us that their numbers are "legit" ranks just behind the guy who tried to estimate attendance figures by watching highlights on MLSNet.com on the Flannigan Credibility Scale.
     
  6. AndyMead

    AndyMead Homo Sapien

    Nov 2, 1999
    Seat 12A
    Club:
    Sporting Kansas City
    For comparison to the previous list:

    MLS -
    Los Angeles 24,204 - 27,000
    Salt Lake 18,037 - 45,017
    Chivas 17,080 - 27,000 + 1 game at LA Coliseum
    DC United 16,664 - was 55,672, probably around 45,000 now
    Chicago 15,657 - 63,000
    MetroStars 15,077 - 77,716
    Colorado 13,638 - 76,100
    San Jose 13,037 - 31,000
    Columbus 12,916 - 22,500 (without optional lower South end seats)
    New England 12,525 - 68,000
    Dallas 11,189 - 68,252 (CB) and 12,000-21,141 (PHP)
    Kansas City 9,691 - 79,409

    This will change drastically over the next few years. But as a point of comparison, most of the K-League is played in Rice-Eccles and RFK Stadium sized venues.
     
  7. shuvy87

    shuvy87 Moderator
    Staff Member

    Oct 17, 2003
    USA
    Club:
    Liverpool FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Japan
    What he meant was that the numbers indicates actual attendence, not number of tickets sold. I seen some games where Revs barely drew 4k and the attendance reports shows 9k.
     
  8. SankaCofie

    SankaCofie Member

    Aug 8, 2000
    Skorgolia
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    Nat'l Team:
    Ecuador
    With inspiration from Jay Hipps i've created a visual aid that depicts how an influx of american goalkeepers would affect Japanese soccer.




    [​IMG]

    I think its fairly accurate.
     
  9. shuvy87

    shuvy87 Moderator
    Staff Member

    Oct 17, 2003
    USA
    Club:
    Liverpool FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Japan
    Five clubs are avobe 20k. Iwata's 17k is pretty impressive, if you consider that their stadium size is capped at 15k. Chiba were drawing 7k on first 3/4 of the season. Since they got a new stadium, they being drawing 17k each games. Another point that you are forgetting... places like Nagoya, Omiya, Chiba, Kashiwa are towns/villages, there are no city around them (meaning population are very low, compared to places like Tokyo and Yokohama)

    Osaka is big city, but they are competing between the pro baseball team, Hanshin tigers. But these two clubs' positive side are that each grew 3k from last season.

    This post compares last year's J attendance
     
  10. kenntomasch

    kenntomasch Member+

    Sep 2, 1999
    Out West
    Club:
    FC Tampa Bay Rowdies
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    As we all have.

    In most sports, it's tickets sold. Not all, but most.

    And again, I have no idea how anyone who's not there all the time would know how it represents butts in seats and not tickets out the door.

    And he qualified it by saying "and not inflated by double headers," which I took to mean "They don't fudge their figures in Japan."

    I have no idea if they fudge their figures in Japan or not. But the "fudge factor" (no jokes, please) has never been adequately defined for me, since it can take many forms. The "paid attendance" figure in the boxscore should, by all rights, represent the number of tickets that were paid for, but I'm not sure it actually has that tight a grip on reality, in any league, in any sport, in America (no idea about other countries).

    When it comes to "announced attendance":
    • A team can announce "tickets sold," which will almost always be greater than the turnstile "drop count," because of no-shows;
    • A team can announce "tickets distributed," which includes comps and any ticket that is accounted for somehow;
    • A team can announce the turnstile drop count, which they almost never do unless it's really good every game, or they're trying to move out of town (the Charlotte Hornets were doing this, and got caught);
    • A team can take any of the three numbers above and "pad" it, either slightly or substantially, to arrive at a figure that's less embarassing;
    • A team can simply make up a number that may or may not be reasonably reflective of the approximate number of folks in the house, give or take - whatever they think they can get away with (I've personally seen this done at the USL1 and MLS level); or
    • A team can deliberately under-report the number of people attending its games to "manage media expectations."

    Okay, the last one's false. That just happens to be my personal favorite of all the stupid things that have ever been said with a straight face on Bigsoccer.

    I don't know which teams in which leagues do which of the above, whether they mix and match, whether whoever's calling the shots has a personal favorite they use or what. I have a feeling that nearly every attendance figure in America (especially as you get to the less-successful Big Four teams and all niche sports underneath the Big Four) should be taken with varying sizes of grains of salt.

    I'm reasonably sure that even if some MLS numbers are less reflective of the actual interest in the teams in question, on a league-wide basis, they're reported more or less the same way, and there's at least a modicum of consistency when comparing numbers across the league or team numbers over time (the Earthquakes under Meterparel notwithstanding).

    I'm reasonably sure that if there's fudging of MLS numbers going on, it's done fairly consistently across the board, so while the numbers may not be terribly good for comparisons to other sports (among the other intrinsic problems with doing so), they're okay when taken as a group.

    And I'm positive that unless you have access to league or team financial reports, you're not going to know how closely the number in the boxscore represents whatever it is you expect it to represent, and anything you say about it is going to be conjecture on your part, and quite sizable conjecture at that.
     
  11. AndyMead

    AndyMead Homo Sapien

    Nov 2, 1999
    Seat 12A
    Club:
    Sporting Kansas City
    And to follow on what Kenn's saying - we really only fixate on attendance figures because we'll never get what we really want, and that's ticket revenue. We want to know how much teams are making, as a measure of the financial health.

    If Kansas City is papering the endzone with $5 tickets, or has Price Chopper "buy" 20,000 tickets and distribute them to customers who buy specific merchandise items for "Beat the Record" night, what does that mean?

    If the LA Galaxy institute 40% price hikes when they move into their new digs - what does that mean?

    Maybe the J-League doesn't "fudge" numbers, but then again, maybe it's more collegiate and corporate team owners include tickets in employee compensation. Honestly? I have no idea. There's a lot of ways to get people into stadiums. And somewhere on the planet, every last one of them is likely in use.

    But without understanding the economic and entertainment systems in Japan - as well as team ownership models and ticket distribution methods, I don't really know how comparable attendance is. And since we really are more concerned about team revenue than we are about attendance, I really don't know how to compare things.

    I as I poorly pointed out above, we have enough trouble understanding and comparing the various systems at play within the U.S. and even in MLS.
     
  12. kenntomasch

    kenntomasch Member+

    Sep 2, 1999
    Out West
    Club:
    FC Tampa Bay Rowdies
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Don't let that stop you. It's never stopped anyone else. ;)
     
  13. AndyMead

    AndyMead Homo Sapien

    Nov 2, 1999
    Seat 12A
    Club:
    Sporting Kansas City
    Well, if my transfer to Cool Kids High School goes through, I'll have to stop supporting the Wizards until MLS institutes promotion/relegation.
     
  14. kenntomasch

    kenntomasch Member+

    Sep 2, 1999
    Out West
    Club:
    FC Tampa Bay Rowdies
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Apply for a teaching position. Mr. Vargas just died.

    [​IMG]
     
  15. RichardL

    RichardL BigSoccer Supporter

    May 2, 2001
    Berkshire
    Club:
    Reading FC
    Nat'l Team:
    England
    off topic, but up the top of the Tokyo Tower (the orange eiffel tower knock-off on the right of the picture) they have murals showing the skyline on a clear day with inscriptions saying what all the highlighted buildings/parks/mountains etc are. Next to those, presumably saying the same thing, are braille inscriptions for the blind. All very considerate, but why exactly would a blind person pay to go up an observation tower?
     
  16. RichardL

    RichardL BigSoccer Supporter

    May 2, 2001
    Berkshire
    Club:
    Reading FC
    Nat'l Team:
    England
    In England it is always the number who attended, not tickets sold. They can tell this number because numbers are automatically counted as people go through the turnstiles. Crowds figures, both home and away support, are listed in every programme. One club (at least), Burnley, even publishes the tickets sold figure as well as the actual attendance. Typically about 1000 people didn't show up.

    Yesterday's match between Reading and Leicester was sold out to home fans, yet the published figure was 2000 below capacity. Some of that was due to Leicester only filling half of their 2000 allocation, but there were still 1000 empty seats in the home stands.

    On exception to this used to be the FA Cup final, which always gave a crowd figure of 100,000 even though surely there must have been a few who couldn't make it.

    Italy certainly issues tickets sold as the figure, and I think Germany does do. Tickets sold is probably the most common way of doing it.
     
  17. crusio

    crusio New Member

    May 10, 2004
    Princeton
    According to MLS Offices in NY, they use the above as their method in accounting for attendance numbers.
     
  18. AndyMead

    AndyMead Homo Sapien

    Nov 2, 1999
    Seat 12A
    Club:
    Sporting Kansas City
  19. Nepal Footy

    Nepal Footy New Member

    Feb 8, 1999
    Nepal
    I plead half guilty. (I've actually been to a few J-League games when visiting Japan, but no I don't live there and can't say with 100% certainty that they do not fudge their numbers, but I do know that England and Colombia or Chivas and America have not traveled to Japan to play games before J-League matches)

    As a MetroStars season ticket holder I apologize if I'm a little cynical about MLS attendance numbers. Take the England - Colombia game for example, not even half the crowd hung around for the Metros game, thus the MetroStars season average does not accurately reflect the people who are buying tickets to go to the swamp and see the club play. Is it MLS' job to report it differently? No. I do however believe that most people assume attendance figures to be butts in the seats and would categorize the way MLS reports its attendance as somewhat misleading.
     
  20. shuvy87

    shuvy87 Moderator
    Staff Member

    Oct 17, 2003
    USA
    Club:
    Liverpool FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Japan
    Yes... you are right, there are no double header in J.LEAGUE games.
     
  21. kenntomasch

    kenntomasch Member+

    Sep 2, 1999
    Out West
    Club:
    FC Tampa Bay Rowdies
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    In their accounting, or in what they announce? I'm sure they have the numbers down to the last comp and the last dollar.

    I've never actually heard or read them say this about what they announce, though it wouldn't surprise me.

    I can tell you with 100% certainty, though, that it ain't so when it comes to each and every MLS crowd.

    Having been at that game, I agree with you.

    Doubleheaders do skew the numbers. We try to make allowances for them. Overall, though, they don't have a huge impact on the league numbers, raising the average less than 5% historically.

    We use attendance figures as one estimate of general league health. As many of us have long said, if we did it like the English (where I believe they'll also release the take at the till, won't they?), we'd have a better idea (and there'd be some embarassing numbers). If we had teams' ticket revenues, even better. We don't, and we're not about to anytime soon.

    I believe most American leagues do tickets sold/distributed. In the NFL, since the tickets are (a) expensive as all hell and (b ) mostly sold as season tickets, there isn't usually a hell of a lot of difference between that number and butts in seats (though the NFL teams used to announce both - distributed, in-house and no-shows...I haven't seen that in years).

    If you want to guesstimate how many people regularly go to games, you'd like to have the drop count. You're not likely to get it.

    If you want to guesstimate the overall general fiscal health of a team/league that is greatly dependent on ticket revenue, then the announced figure (subject to the fudge factors) gives you a greater indication.
     
  22. crusio

    crusio New Member

    May 10, 2004
    Princeton
    In a rather long, tedius but targeted email conversation with MLS home office they describe the announced number as tickets distributed. ANY ticket outstanding for that game is counted. Nick S also said this in an interview last season aswell. ​
    People here have always claimed the number to be tickets sold. I heard otherwise and wanted to find out the truth and the league office was suprisingly forthcoming in their responses. ​
    Like you said earlier, most of these teams tally the numbers the same way which will give us base for comparison. That's true, but only in a way. ​
    When you factor in:
    The double header factor. Last season we had some biggies. A couple 50,000+. One around 42,000 and another upwards of 90,000. Thats ALOT of tickets counting towards MLS figures. ​
    Never waste a ticket ( a great program I might add) allows these teams to tally tickets more than once. They get counted-in with the origional match, then counted a second time if they go unused and traded in.​
    There were also 3 cases last season where the weather factored in. Twice in NY and once in Columbus where due to the weather, those holding tickets for that game could trade them in for another game, gratis. Obviously counting twice aswell. ​
    Then there are freebees. I was in a tourny where there were 32 teams (maybe 36 but I can't remember) and each team got 40 tickets each for participating. That's about 1,300+ tickets distributed that were not sold. They were given away. In the same tournament this year, these teams will be getting season tickets (4 per team entered). ​
    Don't get me wrong, I think each and every move here is good for the league. It gets people out in front of the product and that's ofcourse a good thing. But what are these numbers really telling us? With so much leeway given, its lets the league present us the picture it wants, not the reality. It's more like an artist-rendition than one of Meades photographs.​
     
  23. Jay Hipps

    Jay Hipps Member

    Mar 18, 2000
    Northern California
    Club:
    San Jose Earthquakes
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Argh, not Zach! He'd rove through the stadium eating the supporters!

    Who ate all the fans,
    Who ate all the fans...


    Nice photo.
     
  24. kenntomasch

    kenntomasch Member+

    Sep 2, 1999
    Out West
    Club:
    FC Tampa Bay Rowdies
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Were these all the doubleheaders last year? I don't think I've missed any:
    Code:
    4/27/2005..New England at Chicago (Mexico/Poland)...............54,427
    5/31/2005..Chicago at MetroStars (England/Colombia).............50,807
    6/04/2005..Dallas at Salt Lake (USA/Costa Rica).................40,589
    7/16/2005..Columbus at Chicago (Real Madrid/Chivas).............54,432
    7/16/2005..Dallas at New England (US/Jamaica Gold Cup)..........22,108
    8/10/2005..Los Angeles at Chivas USA (America/CD Guadalajara)...88,816
    10/5/2005..Chivas USA at Colorado (Chivas/Cruz Azul)............28,946
    
    That's 7 games and a total of 340,125 (48,589 average). That's the highest average for doubleheaders since 1996-97 (and there were only 3 of them combined in those two years, so make what you will of that).

    The league average of 13,841 without doubleheaders was the lowest since 2000 (when it was 12,800). The 9% "doubleheader boost" was the largest in league history.
     

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