(the week 21 thread having degenerated into off-topic discussion,) It's time for week 22: two midweek matches: Fire hosting KC @ Nappyville Crew hosting LA @ Hunt Park I'm not a prognosticator, but the Fire match will draw 14k+ (in fact it might be a stadium record attendance if the weather holds). How would that be for a Wednesday night in August? and a full slate on the weekend: SJ hosting DC in the afternoon LA hosting the Rapids Metros hosting the Burn NE hosting the Fire KC hosting the Crew
Wednesday.... Fire v. kc in naperville : 11900 Crew v. LA in Cow-bus: 18850 (buck a brat night?) Saturday.... SJ hosting DC : 8400 LA hosting the Crapids: 14000 Metros hosting the Burn: 14500 Sunday Night.... NE hosting the Fire: 15500 KC hosting the Crew: 10002 This weeks average should be around 13307
i have no idea how that will go down... mls has become much better at not reporting freebies the stadium will probably be sold out, but i don't know what they are going to report, as the local neighbors are getting free tickets to the match per the fire lease and i have no idea what number that is (for the freebies)... it will be interesting to see what they do with it and should also give some actual debate to this thread for once in a long while
But will they count freebies in the crowd count? @ Chicago : 12,207 (not including freebies) @ Columbus: 15,211 @ SJ : 7,401 @ NJ : 15,231 @ LA : 15,718 @ NE : 16,092 @ KC : 11,264 Week 22 avg. : 13,303 lufty & I basically agree!
I'd be disappointed if the Quakes didn't get at least 7K. They had two early season contests that drew close to that. And it sounds like GM Johnny Moore has promoted this game heavily with youth soccer leagues according to posts on the Quakes board. I'm guessing it will be closer to 10K. And the WUSA Rays didn't make the playoffs. It won't be much but it should give the Quakes a little bump in attendence.
Yes, as all the people who have deserted the Quakes because of the evil competition from WUSA come scurrying back. It's Ukranian Night in Naperville as well tomorrow.
I did say "little bump". Just going with the thought that the Rays averaged 7k per game...that had to take something from the Quakes average. Most folks would love to attend I'm sure both teams on a regular basis, but soccer overkill and expenses come to mind. I haven't done the math, but this is BS and I'm someone has, so what are the attendence averages in cities that house teams in both MLS and WUSA, and has this affected any of the teams in those markets over the last 2 years?
there is nothing out there to really say washington shares the same facility, both are at or near the top of their respective leagues i am assuming san jose use the same facility and are in the same area... the mls side is kinda unknown because there is a a lot of debate as to how true the attendance figures were in the past... some thought is that attendence there hasn't changed, just the reporting of it new england teams play in different areas, one in foxbourough and one in boston new york teams play in different areas too...
Fire will announce an attendance of 14,576 on 8/14 and yes they will count all as, "tickets distributed."
but why? the league seems to have been making the effort to not announce freebies... so why announce the neighborhood people freebies as part of the attendance?
I don't want to sound like an ********************* here, but I can't think of a week in the last couple years that someone from SJ hasn't been disappointed with the attendance out there.
Just to let everyone know all sports count attendance that way. The NJ nets finally stopped doing that this year,as a result, I think they finished dead last in attendance. I think their average went fromlike 14k a game to like 8k a game.
NJ Average Attendance 2000-2001 13,807 2001-2002 13,761 3 teams finished this year with a worse attendance than NJ (Houston, Charlotte, and Atlanta) http://www.insidehoops.com/attendance.shtml http://www.infoplease.com/ipsa/A0779624.html Andy
Andy, My fault on that post. I meant to add that they were getting those numbers in the first half of the season, then once they started winning the crowds picked up. Good work Andy.
San Jose boosted past attendence figures, but attendence has had a noticable drop "visually" in the last 3 years.
Because the media (and BS posters) look at the attendence for every game as a "sign". Soccer fans want the numbers to look good so that the ESPN's and Frank Deford's of the world can't dismiss US soccer as 4 people in an English pub. Budging numbers is a tried and true counting method. Just ask someone from Enron.
A friend of mine who does stats for the Quakes, and has been a fan since the NASL days told me that in the early days (1996-99), under different management, attendence figures were exaggerated from say, 6k, to a whopping 12k or greater. Now, figures seem to be precise, and the stands are getting very full. Since the World Cup attendance has averaged between nine and ten thousand on average.
Heres my predictions... @ Chicago : 11K @ Columbus: 14K @ SJ : 6K @ NJ : 13K @ LA : 15K @ NE : 12K @ KC : 8K
To make it seem like there are more people there than actually are there. Just like they count tickets sold even if the person is a no-show. We will see what happens, if the crowd looks like it's fairly full and they only announce 9-10,000 then we will know they didn't count the freebies. I think this game is very unusual, in that the Fire does not usually give away a lot of tickets to games. This one time event was to buy or reward people for not complaining too much about having the Fire play in their backyard.
Hey that will be more than Wimbledon's 668 home fans (2476 total) last Saturday. (and 15 travaling fans at Grimsby today.)