For every game post the attendence. The Friday night game in Va. Beach attendence was around 948? what were last night (saturdays) attendences?
Why is that bad news? I live in Tampa and the Yankees minor league team draws in the hundreds. Remember that the A League is the 2nd division and that A League teams don't get a lot of press.
Drawing less than 1,000 is bad news. Unlike minor league baseball where the parent club pays the players salaries, A-league teams have to pay the players. Even if the salaries are next to nothing, I don't see how a team can survive with overhead costs, etc if it draws that poorly. We have seen enough teams come and go over the years to know that small crowds frequently lead to teams disolving. The other point is that there are teams that do draw well - Rochester, Vancouver, Portland, Charleston, etc - and it reflects poorly on them that there are teams in the league that can't even fill one section of a stadium.
You'll have to learn the difference between "minor league" and "second division". Theres a lot of people who make that mistake but they are completely different things. Timbers Roberto explains it in his post. But I'll add, the A-League is not affiliated with MLS, and it isn't a farm league. Teams are individual entities and have to draw well in order to pay all of their operations including salaries and travel expenses. Plus A-League teams do get a lot of press and promotion IF their management do enough work to garner it. Perhaps the A-League should look into dropping these teams that don't have the fans support that a second division league should have. Sure maybe there will only be 10 teams left, but then they should look into putting teams in cities where they could possibly draw well and not where they should draw well due to population, because that doesn't work. By the way Mutts, that game was in Richmond. Charleston is looking to sell out their home opener 5100+.
I can't say I'm terribly surprised by Charlotte's attendance. I was surprised Charlotte, a Christian club, was playing a home game Easter weekend.
They probably did so to have a built in excuse for poor attendance! I doubt they will draw much better for other games. I didn't know that Christians weren't allowed to go out at Easter!
attendance G enriquez, the rhinos average 11,000 and still are having a bit of trouble with their budget due to the fact that they barely break even each year having to rent out frontier field, and take in very little of the concessions money [which mostly goes to the baseball team].
Re: attendance The Rhinos and the Battery are definatly the models for the A-League. Congrats on your stadium.
portland and a couple others... you cant forget portlant out there, and even vancouver when things are well. I recall vancouver used to average around 4-5k, right krammer?
Re: portland and a couple others... Yes. I think in 2001 it was 5000+ per game. Hopefully it will be the same this season.
so who are the top 5 teams in attendence. 1. obvioulsy rochester. 2. Montreal. They did really well (above 6,000) at the end of last year, hopefully they can keep it up. 3. Portland? they always draw well. 4. Vancouver They did ok last year and with new managment hopefully they will improve. 5. Charelston- they usally fill there stadium. what about Seattle? how do you think they will do at Seahawks stadium?
Look for Vancouver to have Montreal type numbers this season without having to resort to selling tickets at a dirt cheap price like Montreal does! The Whitecaps have over 725 new season ticket holders this year.
attendance mutts, you guys draw pretty decent as i remember, around 2-3k, right? Anything recently led you yo believe that pitt might have some better numbers this year? BTW, will you be up here in ra cha cha on may 17th when we host you guys? Since thats our first saturday game, we'll probably be tailgating in the park across the street from the stadium
haha that is the nicest thing a rhino fan ever said to me. ya we averaged like 2,220 last year. THis year the hounds managment said they expect 4,500. I think it will be a little lower than that. A better schedule- fan wise plus new coaching, new marketing and a better team should all help. as of right now I think we are making the trip. Maybe with more this time but i am not sure. We were going to Richmond but with some buisness conflictions I dont have a ride we still should make 1 rochester and 1 toronto. and possibly 1 syracuse. if we make it I look forward to seeing you guys again. And dominting the Frontier Field air with Riverhound chatns
A fellow southsider thought I should clarify the above statement. Thats 725 new season tickets, meaning it doesn't include renewed season tickets from people who had them last season. In fact all of the season tickets in the bronze sections (lowest price) have been sold out.
Re: Re: A-League Attendence Another site with colorful A-league attendance stats: 1997-2001 http://www.users.qwest.net/~dallen3/AttendanceHistory.html 2002 http://www.users.qwest.net/~dallen3/Attendance.html
Dirt cheap or not, the club made a surplus and are expecting higher numbers this season. Paying 0$ in lease may have something to do with the profit margin in regards to pricing. And a LOT of the Whitecaps new season tickets come from people wanting to assure their presence at the Celtic/ManU game in Seattle, which was the deal.
Maybe so, but they still ended up paying full price for their season tickets which was $279, $229 and $149 each. There are people who bought season tickets and didn't get the deal, as the deal was for people that bought at least 2 season tickets, and not everybody bought pairs. Regardless, 725 new season ticket holders is 725 new season ticket holder regardless of their incentive to buy. It's still money in the Whitecaps pocket.