Interesting idea. Considering that there's only a couple teams with stadiums that can support that many, though, I don't see the point. Granted, we have two teams that can't ever, in their regular stadium, seat more than 20k. But ONLY four teams (Houston, DC, Revs and Seattle, right?) can seat more than 30k. With only one of them doing it consistently, I don't think that number will mean anything yet.
In case anyone is missing the point, this year's median is the 4th highest in history with OR without Seattle.
And this year's average drops to 8th without Seattle. I should have included those little factoids in my post, so excellent catch, Rerun.
And what's been the constant throughout the last three seasons? Mo. TFC has had more turnover than a spatula at an IHOP.
Yeah, so, what's your point? The Rapids have missed the playoffs by a point the last two years, attendance has gone down, and KSE doesn't care. Why would the Rapids continuning to miss the playoffs, this time by even more, suddenyl make KSE care? It wouldn't, and now you've created a fanbase that knows that they have no chance instead of the half chance it currently has. How is that an improvement? I'm all for rasing the cap across the board, don't get me wrong, but parity works, no reason to fix what's not broken.
Does anyone else get annoyed when people say "this is our attendance without Seattle!" Why doesn't anyone say..."this is our attendance without Dallas or New York" just annoying.
I think its been overdone in these threads but it does bring up a valid point. Its like when a retail chain quotes same stores sales increase vs. total sales growth or when corporations quote organic growth Vs. total increase in gross revenue. Taking an expansion franchise out of the equation lets you see how your core business has grown, and because new business results are more variable that is important analysis to make. In this instance those numbers are not particularly positive but not out of line with what has happened in the rest of the sporting market.
Actually, it's nothing like same store sales. Same store sales is a measure of revenue, not the number of people that buy things from a store. In order to do a valid same store sales comparison, you'd have to take a measure of the revenue generated by the people attending games last year vs. the revenue generated by the people attending games this year. Earlier in the year RSL was saying that not only were their numbers up, but that they were giving away far less tickets than they were in earlier years and as a result their revenue from ticket sales was up. No idea if that continued throughout the year, but just because a team's attendance has dropped this year does not mean that they number of tickets that they sold has not gone up.
Maybe I'm wrong but I don't see TFC dropping in attendance. As a TFC fan I'm very disappointed they didn't make the playoffs. That said, they were one win away. That's one goal at some point in the season to switch a tie into a win. Do you really think people are going to say, "Well, I would have renewed my tickets if they'd made the playoffs but since they finished one goal out soccer is no longer worth watching"? It's not as if the team isn't improving on the field or going after better players and coaching.
Honestly, this is where TFC should rely on the little tradition they have. Danny Dichio is still in the organization and TFC should make a request to season ticket holder via Danny. It's not rocket science. Someone in the FO should talk to Dichio and convince him that TFC is still a good option going forward, then let him make the sale.
I would just like to clear the air with the following statement: "Seattle Sounders invented attendance" good bye.
C'mon, now, Seattle would only be in 11th place attendance-wise in the Premiership... http://soccernet.espn.go.com/stats/attendance?league=eng.1&cc=5901 ...and 13th in the Bundesliga. http://soccernet.espn.go.com/stats/attendance?league=ger.1&seasontype=4&cc=5901 And no, I'm not trying to be a Eurosnob about it. Just popping Fuzzy's bubble a bit.
What would Seattle's attendance be without the rest of the teams in MLS? 10K? So why remove their numbers?
From the Soccer America article that appeared in the news articles thread: Link: http://www.socceramerica.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticleHomePage&art_aid=34899
Last year's final numbers. Andy.....I'm hoping you'll continue the threads again this year. If not, someone else must fill in (not me).
I hope to be doing it again this year as I have for god knows how many years now (I am so old ) I will try and dust off the massive spreadsheet and open a new thread tomorrow.
This will be a very interesting season. With pretty much guaranteed increases in Seattle, NY and Toronto, and Philadelphia averaging more than any previous season's league average, if all else stays steady, I'd say there's an outside chance of cracking that 17k number. But there's a lot of teams in the league now, so I'm probably being over optimistic. In my unstudied opinion, I really think the bar should be set at 3/2/2/2 on the AAQ list.
Galaxy attendance is an X-Factor. Historically it's been great, but if it goes down another 30%, it really won't be very impressive any more.
Don't forget the World Cup bump. It helps that MLS is actually not playing during the group stages this time. I expect a sizable increase over last year, and last year wasn't bad, all things considered.
Median should be the easiest one to hit or possibly the under. Would need a really big name DP signing and a good world cup bump to get the average attendance over year 1 and the over 20K doesn’t seem doable unless some double headers take place in alternate facilities. Big factors are going to be world cup and any DP signings. Galaxy is looking down but I'm thinking Chivas surprise again. Whether season is really good will depend on New England, Colorado, Dallas and Houston as they have room to add a lot more.