Boston is an over-rated soccer market

Foxboro, we have a big problem

Jim,
I doesn't matter whether they were freebies, comps or paid admissions.
A lot more people used to come. A lot more people used to care about the Revolution.

The old crowds are an indication of a number of the people that like soccer and were interested in attending matches.

More than half of those people can't be bothered with the Revolution anymore.

How many people with tickets they aren't going to use have been unable to give them away this season?

Don't kid yourself, there still people that are getting freebies, too.

The bottom line is that interest and attendance has been in a freefall, and the only way to get significant numbers out to see the Revos play at Gillette Stadium is with a co-featured game.
When the Revos are playing by themselves, the general soccer fans stay away.

As for overall interest in the Revos, let's see if the TV ratings from last night's big game in Dallas even drew a blip against the Red Sox playoff game.

Tea Men Tom said it best:

"And since the influential members of the Boston media don't care about the Revs the only pressure the Krafts might get to change comes from their relatively small core group of die hard fans.

So basically it's the Krafts call which, I am forced to conclude , is not good news for us Revs fans.

The only positive I see, besides the recent play of team, is that at least we still have one."

But at this rate, for how much longer?

 

"As for overall interest in the Revos, let's see if the TV ratings from last night's big game in Dallas even drew a blip against the Red Sox playoff game..."

Puh-lease. If you're trying to suggest that anything of relevance can be gleaned from this (i.e., "how many Rev fans tuned in to watch the Sox rather than the Revs") then you'll barely notice a twitch.

That being said, if this were a home match then perhaps we could have seen somerthing more readily measurable.

BigFrank, why not nail some particulars in terms of why attendance is down:

Why were there better crowds in the beginning - was this due to a curiousity factor, was the quality of play better,etc.

Why are crowd numbers struggling now - is it a lack of vision or efforton the part of the "Patolution" front office, is the lack of good results an issue...

Interest and attendance may be down.... why?

The Magpie

 

So 40k vs Honduras impresses you, but 40k vs Jamaica is poor. Likewise, 24k for a Nat game in a place that probably goes quite a while between such games is great, but 31k in a city that gets a few Nats games a year sucks. Hard to argue with that logic...

How many investors are going to line up to shell out money for an MLS team because England or Italy can draw a big crowd on a one time only event? Probably about as many as stepped forward after ManU sold out in Philly...

 

Numbers will tell a story

I have no idea what the number is going to be.
I have no idea how if it will be large enough to register on El Globo's weekly ratings list of "What People Were Watching."

So why Magpie are you jumping all over this before any numbers on in? How do you know that something can't be gleaned from them?

Perhaps you'd like to declare Schwarzenegger the winner in California before anyone goes to the polls?

If the Revolution TV rating is anything close to normal, no matter how small normal happens to be this season, then that would be an indication of the level of consistent and hard core support.
There would also be an indication if even the hard core support would rather watch the Red Sox in the playoffs and the usually small ratings figures shrunk even more.

Let's wait for the numbers to come in before we call the election and choose not to analyse them further for fear of just piling on more bad news.

I think we have done that in the thread "Where Have All Of The Revolution Fans Gone?"

Over 300 posts and still easy to find.
The specifics are there.

This thread is more general surrounding the area's viability as a soccer market.

What was once an outstanding American soccer market has taken ill. Until we face up to that fact - or more accurately, the Krafts need to face up to it - then the situation will only continue to get worse.

A good thing has been spoiled. A solid opportunity has been squandered. But the people in position to do something about it don't even seem to realise what the situation has deteriorated to, or even worse, don't seem to care.

 

Big Frank wrote

"So why Magpie are you jumping all over this before any numbers on in? How do you know that something can't be gleaned from them?"

Because interpretation of any increase or decrease in Neilsen points is entirely subjective: the little black box that records the data tells the "what," not the "why." For that matter those votes cast in the California recall election will answer the question of "who," and not "why," the latter perhaps only done through exit-polling.

"If the Revolution TV rating is anything close to normal, no matter how small normal happens to be this season, then that would be an indication of the level of consistent and hard core support.
There would also be an indication if even the hard core support would rather watch the Red Sox in the playoffs and the usually small ratings figures shrunk even more."

See above. Once again, the assumptions made here are entirely subjective. You're assuming and/or suggesting that any decrease in Revolution TV ratings would be due to "hard core support" who'd "rather watch the Red Sox in the playoffs." Once again, the Nielsen numbers don't tell us this.

The numbers tell us what people were watching, they do not interpret or ask whypeople were not watching something else.

"Let's wait for the numbers to come in before we call the election and choose not to analyse them further for fear of just piling on more bad news."

Well Frank, if you're looking for bad news then you'll probably find it. Once the numbers are out, post them here... that being said, go ahead and post the Revolution viewership numbers for the entire season for purposes of comparison: then we can have some fun trying to think up what exactly Revolution fans were doing rather than watching the team no television.

The Magpie

 

When there is an away match on TV without competition from a Patriots game or a playoff game in another sport that New England fans may follow, the ratings number can give an indication of casual and hard core support.

When it goes up against something like a Red Sox playoff game, the chances are that only mostly hard core supporters will be watching the Revs.

Maybe the casual support doesn't exist anymore, so there would be no real change. That would indicate another problem.

Sure, TV ratings are subjective. But they also pay a lot of the bills in pro sports.

If the ratings measure who, and how many, but not why, they can still tell us something.

So what numbers do matter?
Some of the attendances given at Gillette Stadium seemed pretty subjective, too. Although we don't need to get into the debate of actual attendees and no shows/freebies etc.
The numbers for stand-alone games have not been good no matter what kind of figures are used.

 

Were you at the friendly in Seattle? I might be thinking of a different game, but I remember reading articles about how the away fans came from pretty large distances to root for their team, and it didn't sound like they were talking about less than 10% of the crowd. However, you're still comparing rare events in one city with common occurrences in another. Are you saying that Seattle would keep drawing those crowds if they got a MLS franchise and 3 or 4 special events to boot? If not, then your opinions don't truly support your "this is an overrated soccer market" claim.

The NFL gets good crowds when they play exhibitions in other countries. That in no way implies that those countries would support a football franchise. Unless Philly investors see the MLS as a worthwhile price to pay to get one or two euro exhibitions a year, that's not going to do the trick. Instead of using their more valuable games to try and bribe new investments, they're trying to increase the value of the current franchises.

 

Just curious but does anyone know how the Nielson ratings deal with taping? I watched the Sox game and taped the Revs to watch later. I'm sure a lot of other Rev fans did this too. (It's easier to tape soccer than baseball since soccer games only go about 2 hours (2:15) with overtime.)
My understanding is that the ratings system doesn't count taping like this, though I could be wrong.

 

This whole question is a bit of a "chicken and egg" situation. On the one hand, a competent, committed front office who knows what they are doing would be successful with an MLS team in pretty much any of the 25-30 or so "big league" cities in the US, assuming they had a decent enough stadium to play in. There are "soccer fans" in most places, and a smart front office will find a way to get them to come out, as well as other potential fan base groups like the families of kids who play, and general sports fans who follow the other local teams.

And on the other hand, you could have a region full of soccer fanatics (St. Louis) who are dying for a team to support, and if you have either no owner (Tampa) an owner who is a fool (Kluge/Subotnik in NJ), or doesn't have deep enough pockets (Horowitz in Miami/Ft. Lauderdale), or is less committed than other MLS I/Os (Kraft), no matter how "good" the fan base is, it will not be a successful business at the end of the day.

In the early years, Boston showed itself to be a city where there was clearly an interest in the game, and lots of people kicked the tires. Whether they decided to keep coming back is another matter, but a lot of this has to do with the way the front office was in the Brian O'Donovan years. They worked very hard to get the name out there, even with a limited budget. For a number of lengthy reasons, that is not the case anymore.

The question of where the USSF should put National Team games is another matter. Even when we really were one of the "best" markets, I often thought it would be better to spread the wealth around to other places. We have plenty of chances to see live games, but in places like Birmingham or Houston or Seattle or Portland, they always got a good crowd becuase it truly was a special occasion. Every soccer fan within a reasonable distance was there, the same way the first game ever at Foxboro drew 51,000+. Once it becomes old hat, people start to give it a pass. I skipped what would have been my third time seeing
USA-Ireland, but if I didn't know when the next game would be, I would never have missed it.

Ultimately, what you need are more of the first example--committed people who know how to do it well. Whether we should be a league of Rochesters, Tulsas, Indianapolises and Cedar Rapids is another question, but at least the Crew fans could rag on other people for being "stupid hicks." To have a handful of smaller cities where the soccer team is king can work wonders, but we don't want to do that at the expense of the "major" cities. It took the NBA a while to get truly "big league," but the first step was when the Lakers and Warriors establihsed themselves on the west coast, Syracuse Nationals became the Philadelphia 76ers, Rochester moved to Cinncinati (and then to KC, Omaha, and Sacramento), Fort Wayne Pistons moved to Detroit, and a whole bunch of other cities like Sheboygan Wisconsin (Chicago Bulls) and Scranton/Wilkes-Barre PA (Baltimore Bullets=Washington Wizards) moved to large markets. MLS is a long way from having to worry about that yet, but while I agree with Garber that there needs to be a "footprint" in most of the larger TV markets, the ship can not be captained by fools.

Tom

 

Actually, I think this is an excellent thread with many good points being made. The fact is the Revs front office made a terrible mistake when they presumed that the crowds would keep coming with only the lure of an overpriced new ark to draw them. I say this making the assumption that they knew nothing about the football side of the operation at the time when the big conversion to Patalution (trademarked by someone else) management took place.

Many of the suggestions made by the posters on this thread are well worthy of consideration by those in charge, as were those on the sister thread a few weeks back, "where have all the Revs fans gone?"

JIM DOW

 

Awesome. Another thread by someone claiming to be the Revs' or soccer in Boston's greatest fan, only to just bitch and whine.

 

.... We are not asking for A David Beckham signing, but rather stupid things like jerseys being available for sale at the staduim, out of town scores, european pennants, something up the staduim ackowledging the team plays there. is that so bad?

SAVAGE NATION F.C.

Seems to me that SNFC has a very reasonable set of requests, all of which are available at practically every other MLS locale. Few, if any, are visible hereabouts.

Along with the $$$ for the franchise these should be requirements league-wide. And, in point of fact, they all used to be the case here, too before we got the big corporate tea cozy of a new stadium.

JIM DOW

 

No offense, but do you really think that you're the only person that notices these things? Read all 350 or so posts in the thread "Where Have All The Revs Fans Gone?". All of your concerns are addressed there, except for the european pennants. However, it seems reasonable to try and sell Revs merchandise at a Revs game.

As for the "troll" thing, nobody called you a troll because they're defending the Krafts. You started a thread about how the Boston soccer market is over-rated without really backing that up. Unless you want to call stating that you're not impressed by the Revs attendance at big games because it should be higher, but you are impressed by other areas who get crowds that are the same size or smaller backing it up. Or, the argument that the teams whose owners work hard at building an audience have increasing attendance, but the Rev crowds are dwindling under the Kraft's neglect. If you'd started a thread entitled "the Revs are poorly marketed", then people would have merely referred you to previous threads on the topics and not called you a troll.

 

It's a legitimate question to ask if Boston/New England is over-rated as a soccer market. If you want to build your hypothesis on things like attendance for the WWC and Gold Cup, be prepared that people will point out a lot of mitigating factors that make the question more complicated than comparing mere numbers from other similar games in years past. It's the equivalent of some pinhead in the MLS office determining who the best keeper in the league is not by watching a lot of games, but by compiling all the available stats for GAA, shots, catches/punches and anything else you care to measure. Sure, those figures can be useful in the right context, but you can't base your whole premise on them.

Unlike some people who have started "controversial" threads, Savage Nation didn't try to weasel out of an outlandish statement, like the guy who claimed Meterparel "should be running the show," and then later chimed in that he was crap after everyone else told him so.

Typically, "troll" threads go in a couple of directions: a quick death after people ignore it, a pissing contest, or Andy Mead starts posting from his collection of "the Babes of the WUSA." Not many "troll" threads have 40-odd replies, many of them intelligent attempts to talk about the question that was raised, even if they refute some of the original arguments.

This may be a bit of overlap between here and the "Where have all the Revs fans gone" thread, but I don't think that's a bad thing, unless that thread dies. That thread has been on the front page for months and is a pretty good summary of what's wrong with this team.

Tom

 

Still, the point of the thread topic isn't really to trick people into reading your post. Aside from being annoying, it creates confusion, as people look at your arguments in the context of your thread topic.

We do have 2 camps, and it's been thoroughly demonstrated that neither side's going to budge much. How does this affect this thread?

Maybe people got upset because of the " Boston is an over-rated soccer market" than an analysis of NE soccer attendance. Too late to tell now. They might not even be elitists.

 

Is that a request?

 

If not, it was definitely a subtle hint...

 

Good looks and she came on late to score the World Cup semifinal winning goal!



Oh, and I was absolutely shocked out how small the crowd was last Wednesday when I showed up for the Quarterfinal doubleheader.