Last season's attendance thread started with a poll so I thought I'd keep w/ 'tradition.' Predict the 2010 average attendance in the poll. Then we can use the thread to discuss the average and median attendance figures and any other attendance related info. Sadly, last year's attendance leader (average & median), the LA Sol, is no longer a WPS team.
I voted 4.5k. I think each (existing) team's average attendance will go up, but I think the increase will be offset by losing the league's leader. I'll bet, though, the number of teams averaging under 4k drops to 1 this year.
I should have but these numbers from last season in the first post. My bad. At the end of the 2009 regular season: Including the post-season (but not the All-Star game), the average bumps up to 4717 (I think). I'm going to go with 4700. That number assumes everyone else improves their average attendance to make up for the loss of the good LA numbers. Possibly a conservative guess since there have been reports of increased season ticket sales from several quarters. But LA is a big loss and two teams averaged below 35k last year.
I'm going for about the same - I think the expansion sides will do well and FCGP will imporve (they had nowhere to go but up even without Marta), but that the other sides will fall off some as the novelty fades heading into year two.
Maybe I'm fooling myself, but I don't think there was much of a novelty effect with WPS, at least not where the Freedom are concerned (though there definitely was for the WUSA). I think the Freedom will see a bump upwards in attendance this year. Not sure about anyone else. Fingers crossed!
I see increase in attendance everywhere. But I think FC Gold Pride and Sky Blue FC will see the biggest jumps. But, I would still bet money that the Freedom and Red Stars will be league leaders again.
Seating capacity does play into attendance. So here's a wiki page on WPS stadia. I know the capacity for the Soccerplex in this wiki entry is wrong. The Plex's own site gives 5,200 as the capacity.
So? I know what the right number is for the Maryland Soccerplex and corrected the page accordingly. I don't know what the right figure is for the Anheuser-Busch Center, but anyone who does know it is free to correct the page.
It's kind of strange, but having been to both, it was my sense that the Maryland SoccerPlex actually had more seats and certainly not over 1000 less. The seats on the one side at Soccer Park do go around the corner, but the sections are only about 8 rows high on that side.
Yeah, TV is not the best judge but even on TV the Maryland SoccerPlex definitely looks bigger than the Soccer Park so it's quite hard to believe that they actually have a 1000+ FEWER seats than the Soccer Park!
Good article on Equalizer about season ticket sales. 5 out of 6 previous teams report increases over last year, and the numbers for Atlanta are leading the league in new season ticket sales. Antonucci is hoping for a 5-10% increase in attendance this season. Sounds realistic but without the Sol's numbers it will be a challenge.
Well, all ticket sales are new ticket sales for Atlanta Indeed. I'm curious if anyone has a good grasp of percentage of season ticket holders relative to overall ticket purchases -- in general marketing guidelines/goals and w/ respect to WPS teams.
misconception... LA led the league first half of the season largely on the strength of the opening game. look more closely at the second half (last five home games). LA wasn't the leader CHICAGO was! The LA fiction was that it dominated the league in attendance. somewhere around midseason it dropped off and didn't come back to early in the year. also interesting to see the momentum of several of the teams in second half (not LA) to see the steady growth as the playoff picture and awareness was higher. i think higher this year and atlanta is my guess for attendance leader -- i think the new stadium buzz is going to be phenomenal.
Mark Washo of the Freedom told me that the other teams are watching closely to see how Atlanta does in their new stadium - if they're successful in filling it, then that would provide some impetus for other teams to build their own stadiums rather than borrowing them.
10am games will do that. As will weekday games before 5pm. they had some crappy @ss scheduling times at the end of the year due to conflicts w/ the HDC. Regardless, they still had the highest median home attendance of all WPS teams. (and the highest average, but that figure includes the inaugural game). one can but hope. and buy tickets if you're in the area. SkyBlue will be a team whose attendance I'll be watching closely*. If management can not translate a playoff run & cup championship into greatly increased attendance, then there's a problem in NJ. Their median last year was 3374 and their total attendance was the lowest in the league (based on the figures we pulled together from box scores in last season's thread). *who am I kidding, I'll be watching all the attendance figures closely. I freaking started an attendance thread.
Call me crazy, but I think the league will average over 5,500 this year. They will achieve right around 530,000 tickets sold in aggregate total (for the 96 regular season games). That comes out at a mean avg. of 5,520 butts (skinny or fat) in their seats (or on ticket stub per se) per WPS regular season match. 5,520 per match is a major upgrade over last year's mean avg. I visualize and see in my crystal ball this particular statistical breakdown for attendance: Mean - 5,520 Median - 5,302 Mode - 5,276 Range - 10,616 High - 12,462 Low - 1,846 Total Tickets Sold - 530,001 530,000 / 96 = 5,520.83 fans per match (but you can't round up here, as you can't have 5/6 of a person). That would be about a 20% growth or so from last year (in terms of attendance on a single match avg).
Wasn't sure where to post this tidbit but in the Good Wife last night, CRS got a mention sorta a throw away line (in a cutting costs by getting CRS season tix instead of Cubs season tix) but still a mention on a national tv show.
I did find some interesting info about 2001 WUSA attendance figures in ESPN SPORTS ALMANAC 2002... 2001 Average Attendance for each club: Washington 14,421 Atlanta 11,092 Boston 8,012 Bay Area 7,692 Philly 7,154 NY 5,724 San Diego 5,714 Carolina 5,255 League Average: 8,104 2001 Championship game (at Foxboro): 21,078 showed up I guess WUSA's first season wasn't too bad...Then we know what happened in 2002 and 2003...
Interesting. This post from kenntomasch (a generally reliable source) gives some comparisons for the 3 years of WUSA and the first half of WPS.
Keep in mind that Washington's numbers include the inaugural match (34,000, as I recall, and a couple of doubleheaders with DC United). The numbers dropped in ensuing years but didn't plummet. However, the league was premised on getting attendance (and TV ratings) closer to what the inaugural match got. WPS has more realistic expectations.
WOW....even the lowest attended team has greater than a 5K average. I didn't even know Carolina and San Diego had teams. Shouldn't Carolina be considered for a WPS team again? They are one of the top soccer states in America with their great college programs for men and women.