"BUT MOMMMM EVERYBODY ELSE IS DOING IT!!!!" http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/12/AR2007091201874.html
LOL. I meant it in the sense that someone like TFC fan can/will run attendance smack because that is all they have. You are in the playoffs and your park is profitable. Why bang on Houston when we rent and as posted before we had the barca/CA dbl header to inflate our numbers. We are doing... OK.
My family and a two friends of my kids arrive 40 minutes before kick-off, 8 of us. At the ticket window they inform us the game is sold out with only standing room tickets available. I normally buy seats in section 118 or 117. Anyway, we don't care, we just want in the stadium so we pay the general admisssion price and prepare to stand for the duration of the game. To my surprise, there were PLENTY of available seats. Especially behind the goal in our favorite section in 118. There was no way this was a sell-out. 20 minutes into the match I realize the stadium is not going to fill-up and we get a seat. It was annoying to feel like we were occupying someone else's seat when in reality there was so much space available. I had told the kids and wife, be prepared to move when the ticket holders arrived to claim their seats. Needles to say, no one appeared to claim the spots we had occupied. The final attendance figure was over inflated. I wonder how many people left without buying tickets because they thought they wouldn't have a seat?
Although I think that your final thought is valid, a sell-out does not equal a packed house. It was obviously a sell-out if they sold you a GA ticket, everybody just didn't show up. I don't mind them flaunting a sell-out, I just don't like them saying the attendance was the equivelant of a sell-out.
And what do you want the FO to do about this? If they've sold(or given away) all the seats, they can't exactly sell you that same seat that someone else already has.
So you want them to do something that no pro sports league in the country does....i.e. announce actual attendance? NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL......none of them report actual attendance, all of them, to some degree, have no shows. Yes, there are games where this is a much bigger factor for MLS, but NBA teams have been just as guilty in the past. No one does this, MLS shouldnt either.
Don't be surprised. There has only been one game where I could not move had I wanted and that was a Mexican league double header a few years ago where it was three to four deep in the standing room only parts. People standing on top of tables to see. Otherwise there are always no shows and usually a lot of them. I am still wondering if they assigned the unsold tickets/flexis for the year seats and that accounts for the big difference in tickets sold versus BIS for this game while the rest of the year has been pretty close between the two.
not that it invalidates the point, but I think the NFL does announce real number and not inflated. But they are the only ones I believe. Then again they are the NFL and crush everyone even with uninflated numbers.
I was told they stopped doing that in the 80's. Not that there is a huge difference between tickets distribiuted and tickets used anyway.
The higher the ticket price the less difference there probably is. If you have a high priced ticket and can't make it you will sell it or find it easy to find someone eager to take it off your hands because of the "value" attatched to it because of the high price.
NASAR also lets you bring ice chests into the race and smoke in the stands. They are a little different in many ways.
That's a meatball line if I ever saw one...... - They tried to once, but Goober ran out of fingers and toes real quick. - They find it more interesting to count total number of Mullets and missing teeth, but nobody is interesting in publishing those numbers - They don't want to alert the authorities to all those meth labs that have been left unattended - They lose count everytime a patron walks through the gate wearing a giant #8 Tshirt. - The France family is more secretive than the mafia - Congress is afraid of creating a public health scare if people know 120,000 folks with diseases were gathered together for a weekend anyone else wanna give it a crack...we could go on for weeks.
Fix that tollway, score more goals, and give me a place within walking distance where I can get a proper beer (although I am now a fan of the Tsingha at the Thai place) and I will buy an extra ticket for each game to raise the attendance! Actually, I am satisfied with FCD attendance. If we could bump the average up to 17k (mind you that would put us on par with a Reunion Arena sellout!) and have those extra 1.5k average people be a little rowdier, I think PHP would be even better!