Wow. That's pretty rapacious behavior, to charge that kind of money for parking that far away. Holy smoke. I'm pretty shocked; it's just unnecessary, especially for a franchise and sport that is trying to get established. These ain't the Lakers here.
even the Mets don't have that at their box office. Now if they said there was a $3 USSF right to host the event fee...........
yeah because there are only like 30,000 - 40,000 people in the Los Angeles area. So I'm sure you guys had to split those people up with those other two events... NOW THATS SARCASM
At some point "this economy" will have to stop being an excuse. Consumer spending is back to pre-recession levels. There are still a reasonable number of people out of work, but that's not so much the economy but the fallout of business figuring out how to trim their workforces - jobs that won't come back just because those businesses start making money again. Essentially, the way to higher employment is to start new businesses to compete with the existing ones. You know what? No. LA's too big for that excuse. Unless you can prove a very specific crossover audience between boxing and soccer, invalid. A bunch. It was "Ichiro-designed t-shirt day," although looking at the results I'd suggest they let actual designers design the shirts. Look for big crossover crowds on July 11 (M's-Yanks/SSFC-FCD) and July 25 (M's-Sahx/SSFC-COL). There ought to be some rowdy-ass Sounders fans after a warm day of drinking at a packed Safeco.
Baseball attendance is down for many teams and the economy is part of the reason. It's not just a problem for MLS. Well if you want a specific example then I am one. I had tickets to the Cubs game Saturday afternoon and then was not able to attend the Fire game that night. Obviously, it doesn't account for everything but to say it has no effect is not true.
Care to venture a guess for what the "consumer spending" is for those people you toss aside as excess to business requirements? Also, care to venture a guess as to how much money spent by these people you say need to "start new businesses to compete with existing ones" will be on soccer games? Last, if people not having jobs is just a function of "businesses figuring out how to trim their workforces," why does, for example, the construction industry have a 25% unemployment rate? You're really going to tell me that 1 in 4 people in that industry are surplus to what the workforce needs? I know it's become fashionable to hand-pick statistics to help you lie to yourself that the recession is over, and thus deem the shitty state of the economy as an "excuse," but it doesn't make the problem go away. The economy is still in bad shape in almost every area the government isn't pumping money into, and as the original poster said, a 0% increase over last year is still a great number for a sports league right now.
<facepalm> What part of "people are spending as much money as they did before the recession" is a problem for you? Because that's the part that's relevant here. In fact, what it looks like is that in general and in most MLS cities, Americans are spending more on the MLS product than ever before. Just not in LA. Which is why a bad LA attendance figure can't be blamed on "this economy."
"You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to bunge again." Sigh. You're saying that you need a pretty picture to make you understand? Fine. But the fact that you're apparently incapable of looking something up on your own doesn't bode well for your ability to discuss things like an adult.
See, I thought all-caps was yelling. This feels more like a Dirty Harry whisper. But Dirty Harry wasn't quite so wordy.
What kind of ass backwards fire fan are you skipping one of your teams 15 home matches for a cubs game.. its not as if there aren't another 80 games you could have chosen to see the cubs. (NOW THATS EVEN MORE SARCASM)
It was your point, and thus your burden of proof. His or my "ability to discuss things like an adult" relies on your behaving like an adult too, and if you're going to posit a point, don't get all squirrelly when you're asked to back it up. Gee, maybe the points you snipped out of my post as non-relevants. Let's start from the beginning. The post you quoted from, by bbsbt, had nothing to do with LA, and the portion of your post I chose to respond to had nothing to do with LA. So stop moving the goalposts. Next, the point you made, that "At some point "this economy" will have to stop being an excuse," rested on two points. First, that "Consumer spending is back to pre-recession levels," which ignores that your graph of consumer spending is not a graph of MLS fan consumer spending, and assuming the two are the same graph is a logical fallacy. Second, your point rested on "There are still a reasonable number of people out of work, but that's not so much the economy but the fallout of business figuring out how to trim their workforces" which, to follow your original logic, suggests that you think these people without jobs are going to be spending on par with the national consumer spending levels, and in particular spending money on MLS, which is a fallacy for all of those reasons you ignored from my first post.
Although you can't really tell from that series. First, you want per capita numbers. Since 2010Q1 is about the same as 2008Q1 in terms of overall consumption, this implies that the 2010Q1 per capita number is still lower. Now, a greater population means more people to buy tickets, but they also are different people, which matters. Second, you really need to separate out kinds of products. Expenditures on major durable goods still hasn't caught up with the pre-recession numbers, however, expenditures on certain services has exceeded pre-recession spending. This makes sense: spending on basic services doesn't vary much and so will grow with the population. Purchases of major durables and discretionary items are much more sensitive to income fluctuations. The BEA does have estimates of spending on spectator sports. It shows a small decline over this time and no recovery. Third, you really need to disaggregate spending on spectator sports by league. While it's sometimes argued that soccer fans have a higher average income than sports fans in general, I doubt that it's true for soccer ticket buyers. In fact, I would expect it's the other way around, given the dramatic disparity in ticket prices. Lower income would imply greater sensitivity to changing economic conditions. I'm not sure about how much the decline in attendance is due to the economy, but I don't think you can settle it from the chart above.
Well thanks for the explanations that leave one person looking like a dipshit. I'll paint you a pretty picture so you understand: it's not me that looks like the dipshit.
Really? You don't think there's a crossover between soccer fans and boxing fans? Aren't there ANY Mexicans in Seattle? Are you that daft and insulated? Not to mention that those of us who go to Galaxy games in person, instead of commenting from their Sounders fan throne, will tell you that they've observed the boxing PPV effect on HDC attendance with THEIR OWN ********ING EYES!!!
I'm curious whether you and any of your friends watch boxing. And what is the demographic that does? I pretty much never hear anyone I know talk about it. I'm not saying it's not a factor. Clearly lots of people pay attention. Just looking for clarity on who they are and how they may overlap with our audience.
Population growth has been less than 1% in the last year, so while it pushed the per capita change from just barely positive to just barely negative when measured from the absolute peak, the change is significantly positive when measured against April of 2007, April of 2008 and especially April of 2009. So you all look pretty silly relying on the change from the absolute peak to say he's cherry-picking. Everything else about that graph shows that consumer spending is ramping up, and that it's higher than virtually any time in our past, no matter whether you look at total consumption or per capita.
And RapidStorm, you really are a knucklehead. Why yes, I do mean to tell you that 1 in 4 people working in construction in 2007 was unnecessary. Perhaps even in the nearly impenetrable bubble in which you live, you may have heard the term "housing bubble." The housing bubble was a run-up in prices to completely unsustainable levels. When prices were very high, it became profitable to try to build lots of houses to skim the froth off the market, so the construction industry got unsustainably large. Now that the bubble is popped, we're back to a sustainable level of new construction. That was the very essence of the last 8 years of economic history. But somehow you missed it. It's really not that tough if you think about it. But that's the trick for posters like RapidStorm. You have to think about it.
I think the Galaxy has always been pretty accurate as far as tickets sold. Attendance is actually down this year. Saturday was the worst attended game at the HDC that I've ever been to. It looked really weak. Ticket prices are too high, especially for sideline seats, but there are other issues with advertising. Everyone has forgotten about the team. Even without Beckham, we should be able to break 20k every game based on our play. Hell, we were able to do it for years before Becks arrived.
As I already said, what's the overlap between this consumer spending graph and a MLS fan consumer spending graph? Assuming they're the same graph is downright silly. And no, I will still accuse him of "cherry-picking," as "consumer spending" isn't the only statistic out there that shows whether we are in a recession (and that's before I even get to the philosophical point that consumers don't drive the market, producers do). He's chosen the one stat that makes his point and rationalized away all other data (unemployment data in particular) as irrelevant. That would be the definition of cherry-picking to me. Don't be a condescending ass. I still work in this construction industry, I went through the "bubble" the same as everyone else. And working in said industry, there's a HUGE difference between an "unsustainable industry size" and "complete lack of building projects in roughly 90% of US states for the last 4 years, unless they have been financed by the government." Losing 1 in 4 workers hasn't returned this industry to a healthy size or condition; it's been murdered. And I'll repeat the point I'm making here, since you're going to try to use the example I picked (of the several other industries in bad shape right now) to ignore the overall point: The original posters' point rested on "There are still a reasonable number of people out of work, but that's not so much the economy but the fallout of business figuring out how to trim their workforces" which, to follow his original logic, suggests that he thinks these people without jobs are going to be spending on par with the national consumer spending levels, and in particular spending money on MLS, which is a fallacy for all of those reasons ignored from my first post. If unemployed people are supposed to start up new businesses, where are they going to have the leftover money to spend on MLS? Or do we still pretend they don't exist in the consumer spending graph, just like we pretend that none of that consumer money spent came from, for example, bailout incentives?
FWIW, I know La Turbina (primarily Latino supporter group for the Crew) was promoting that they would have the fight on during the Crew-Seattle game watch party at their bar. I don't think they would have skipped a home game for it, but know it was a big deal to their demographic. I wouldn't have known their was a fight otherwise.