First, all the attendance trolls that thrashed this thread after the last game need to appologize now. Second, my goal for the first two games was 27,500 in attendance. The total was 28,400. I believe an increase of 10% is virtually assured now. The last game of the year traditionally is a large crowed. Add to that, I've found out it's Christian Family Night, a crowd of 16,600 is almost a certain. Whether you like them or not, the Wizards have found a niche to boost attendance and are marketing to them. I might have to eat crow, but let me be the first to congratulate the Wizards on the increase.
I don't know about this idea. Think Elvis impersonator events. The same thing would happen with Paysse. Every skin-tight clad chunky latina in the bi-state area with a few honies. No thank you.
20,173 on saturday my ass, What I saw on the TV was that were know more than 8,000 in the stadium, or was 20,173 a misprint. If it's not then someone need to learn to count because that was not even close to 20,173.
Your ass wasn't at the game now was it? A couple things you can't see when you're at home watching on TV....1) The GA section was packed, when that section is packed we're always close to 20K. 2) The side you can't see from the camera had more people than the side you see when the game is going on. I didn't believe 20K, but I've been to tons of games at Arrowhead (as it seems you haven't) and can pretty well guesstimate how many people are there. I'd say around 16-18K .It certainly was more than 8K, I could have told you that from the cars in the parking lot. Don't come in here making bold statements when there are many people that were actually there and know first hand what you don't.
I wasnt at the game on saturday, but i know that traditionally they seat people on the side facing away from the press box, so its possible that the crowd looked alot thinner than it actualyl did. but, again, i wasnt at the game, so maybe someone that was can back me up on this.
Why don't you ask the Fire fans who were there how many it looked like? Instead you base your assumptions on the tv angle where you see one side of the stadium. As Ben noted GA was packed, behind the goal Fabbro scored into if you want to watch the tape again. The side the cameras were on looked very full too with people even in the middle and upper tiers. It looked like 20,000 to me. I was in GA and there were not very many empty seats.
the side where the camera were (the part not shown on tv) looked pretty packed to me and the other side wasnt half bad either. I was in the front of GA so it was hard to tell if it was full or not...
Watch Browns goal in the hit parade (its the #3 goal) and you can see the crowd after the goal. It looks pretty damn full to me.
20k on a hot humid day -- congratulations. How'd you do it? Free BBQ? Free Kool-Aid for the first 10k kids? Free-and-easy cheerleaders for... whatever, congrats are in order. Problem with a Big NFL Colisseum is that anything up to about 30k looks small - - and the cameras are always looking at the weak side of the house. Why this is I'll never know. There was talk of a KC sss in Kansas -- anything more on that?
Congrats on the crowd saturday. See what happens with some creative marketing. About what it looked like on tv, I've been to many metros games at giants stadium where there is 20k there and it still can look empty, especially on one side. Being that arrowhead is about the same size, it doesn't surprise me that it still looked empty with 20k. With another good crowd expected at the last game, that will give KC a nice increase for the year. Once again congratulations, keep it up.
Actually I believe its 16K to have a 10% increase. Nonetheless, we continue to increase attendance figures each year and still continue to hear how we suck when it comes to attendance....from most other MLS teams fans.
Some of which is deserved. It's easier to see your average rise every year when you're starting from squat. The holy grail, for every team, should be to get back to 1996 levels. Of course, we'll ignore Colorado and their *ahem* 20k average this season. I guess we should be comparing medians. I really wish I hadn't taken those media guides home.
I agree, median are a much more logical way of looking at attendences. In short it says how many people will be at a game at any given night. Averages are easier to manipulate, medians are more difficult, and if you can manipulate the median then the front office is doing their job.
It depends on what you're looking for. Are you looking at attendance as a broad indication of ticket revenue? Are you looking at attendance as a level of support? Etc. If you're looking at attendance as a broad indication of revenue, then using the median is silly. It's all about the final numbers, because that's how many people bought tickets (more or less). If you're looking at attendance in terms of support, it makes more sense to use the median, though you'd want to be a bit more sophisticated about it to account for differences between weekend and weeknight games.
I think that most people on these boards tend to look at attendence in terms of support. If you exclude the one weekday game that we had this year thus far it bumps the median up by 156 people. Though it is almost certain that with the final match drawing more than 11,000 people, the median excluding the one weekday match will be 10,636. With the one weekday match it goes down to 9,877. The good news is that the lowest attended match of the year was an increase over last years by over 2,000 people.
For the Wizards, I believe a modified mode is probably the best indicator of core fan support. The following shows 2002 attendance per thousand categorized in groups of 2,000. 20+ -- 2 18-20 -- 1 16-18 -- 0 14-16 -- 0 12-14 -- 0 10-12 -- 3 8-10 -- 4 6- 8 -- 3 It's pretty clear that the base support for the Wizards is 8,000 to 10,000 and can be a little higher or a little lower depending on the day of the week, weather, time of year and other factors. For us soccer fans this is measure of who in KC likes the game as much as us, but to the businessman and owner, total attendance and average is all that matters. Total attendance translates in to total dollars earned to pay total expenses. Just like all businesses, soccer will have it's up times and down times. It's just compressed into a 14 game schedule. (For example, most retail sales business make all their sales in November and December. Their business looks terrible the rest of the year.) From the Wizards point of view the best thing to happen would be the core to continue to grow and the big games continue to get bigger. I've rambled too much now.
Even though I tend to hammer on about medians, Sam makes a great point. The fact is, if we average 12k, or around 170,000 season attendance, and the Rapids average over 20k, or 280,000. That's still 110,000 extra paying customers who are parking, buying pretzels and beer, picking up replicas, etc.... The other thing is that the media and advertisers focus on averages. MLS's average attendance increased yet again this year.... As did the Wizards... Colorado is going to face the downside in 2004, as I doubt they'll repeat the 20k. I show 107 home MLS regular season games at the end of the season. Does that get us past 1,000,000 all-time attendance? I'm sure the internationals, cup games, and MLS playoffs surely do.
1) Doesn't 2003 have to come before 2004??? (Or am I missing something there?) 2) Yeah, they had a deal at a game this summer for the 1,000,000th Wizards fan. Some little hispanic dude got it, oddly it was Hispanic Heritage night. Good thing most of the Hispanics only come to jeer us when a Mexican team is in town. (Can you tell I'm bitter?) As for average, median, blah blah blah.....Money is the end all in this business if we want it to survive, so an increasing average is all that should matter. And support??? Last weekend was the 4th largest crowd ever, could anyone tell from the "support" the other 19,950 fans were giving? There have been games with 10K that were more electric in the stands than last weekend. The people may come, but are they doing anything more than shelling out money?
Yes and yes. They won't have to deal with the downside of getting 20k in 2002 until AFTER they get a lower average in 2003. 2004 is when they have to deal with the "perception" of worse support.
I think average attendance is much more important EXCEPT for the fact that MLS fudges with these absurd doubleheaders. I fail to understand why Colorado's July 4 attendance shouldn't count.
I really don't think this would be a major topic of converstion but for the fact that MLS fudges the stats by counting people that did not pay to watch an MLS match. What if thousands of families that want to go to one game decide to make it the home opener or the July 4?
And this, based on conversations I've had, is the case more than people just coming to watch fireworks. They're people who enjoy going to Wizards games but don't really make it a regular part of their life. The fireworks just give them the incentive to make that the game.
1. If they make money on it (and they did), then that money can be used for something else...like more advertising. 2. If people are exposed to the game, preferably having paid for it, they're more likely to come back. If they do, that's more business. If they don't, you still have their money.