That's the essential question. After thousands of posts on this forum, the fact is that no one outside the organization knows. If you only concern consider the team as an expense on CD guadalajara's marketing budget, perhaps they could sustain? But there are so many factors to involved, and this is not the thread for it.
Not much changed from last season IIRC. I will post the numbers tonight, but I think VWFC had a similar slow start last season as well. There was an assumption when they entered the league that they would be a Toronto or Seattle in terms of steady and large crowds. So far they have managed to stay above 15k in every game and average ~20k, but they have a fair amount of variance. Too early in their existance to really figure out any trends in my opinion. Chivas OTOH has become more and more clear from the beginning that they were destined to have issues. I *really* need to get that team centric data posts out, so I will buckle down this week and work on it.
Yeah, I was thinking the fact that they made the playoffs last year and look to have a good team, might have bumped them above their normal trend (that's still expected). But you're right it's nothing abnormal.
D-III USL Orlando City outdrew Chivas playing in a preseason friendly against the NASL Tampa Bay Rowdies. If I were Garber, I would worry more about moving and rebranding Chivas then expanding into Long Island...
And the numbers seem to validate the FO's decision to cap attendance at 21,000 and not the full lower bowl capacity of 27,000.
I am one that was wondering why the lower cap and when the entire lower bowl would be opened up.......I guess they have more difficulty selling the 21k than I thought they did (or to be candid think they should)....that said, I can see that with a max attendance of 27k there would likely be more days sub 20k than over 21k. That said, VCR "sellouts" should be seen for what they are ....false sellouts. Without opening the upper bowl, their stadium capacity is actually 27k...they have just chosen to limit that by not selling the back "X" rows of each section. To use an extreme example, Chivas could announce this past weekend a sellout by simply saying there are 20k seats at HDC they did not put on sale. That is not to complain/diminish/criticize about the VCR attendance....but they are "fudging" the numbers a bit (and in a different way than, say, New England, who close off sections of the stadium....from what I see VCR opens up every section of the lower bowl....just not the back rows of the sections).
lol.....that said, I do see a difference between what Seattle and Vancouver do.....Seattle (if I have got this right) opens/closes entire sections of the stadium so there is the cost/management difference of not having to serve sections "X/Y/Z". Vancouver has all sections of the lower bowl open for all games....they just choose not to sell the back "X" rows.....so there would be no difference in staffing/managing the stadium were they to open those rows up.
Well, other than with more people you're probably going to need more staff (more ticket-takers, more security, more people at the concession stands, etc.) Seattle's plan does allow them to minimize the number of concession and other locations (restrooms for example) they have to open/staff while I assume Vancouver has to open/staff every location in the lower bowl.
Not to get into semantics, but to me "fudging" implies papering the house, which I don't think the Caps do in any manner moreso than other teams. I'd still like to think they could open the lower bowl for big matches, especially if decent travelling numbers are expected. The impact, I'd imagine, would be small enough on costs. However, perhaps the 21K cap makes sense for most matches to stir demand.
your letting your own bias apply a singular definition to what I said. No where did I say or suggest that VCR is papering the house. I am just saying that when they announce a "sell out" like they did for their opener...it is a fudged sell out. They achieved the sellout by artificially deciding their stadium held 21k......there are lots of stadiums where full capacity is not used for all events.....but the line is usaully much less arbitrary (ie. upper bowl closed....or sections "X, Y, Z" closed. In the case of Vancouver they open the entire stadium's lower bowl but, arbitrarily, close the back rows of most (all?) sections. The lower bowl of BC Place holds 27k....that is a sell out. 21k is "we sold all the tickets we thought we could sell so that is all we put on sale". I am gonna stop talking about this as I am straying from a small, minor, point into sounding like I am bashing VCR....which was never my intent...they are a solid team, solid club...solid market. I just don't think 21k is selling out BC Place.
It seems to me that YOU are the one applying a bias here. If Vancouver, or any other club for that matter, announce at the start of the season that the ticket inventory will be 21,000 per game then it's a "sellout" if they sell all 21,000 tickets. Stop twisting yourself in knots trying to make a point that is irrelevant.
The reason for this is that they want to sell as many season tickets and packages as possible, and one primary way of encouraging this is to make tickets scarce. The worry is that if they regularly increase capacity for high demand games, it'll reduce the reason to get season tickets. If you know there are cheap or face value tickets available for every game, why would you pay potentially more up front?
I'm thinking "fudged" is too strongly negative a term to use. I really don't see any difference between VCR agreeing to play their games in a much-larger BC Place and self-disciplining themselves to limit seating and ticket sales at 21,000 vs. SKC and SJE deciding to build 18,000-seat facilities. Rather than "fudging" I see VCR management as realistically understanding their market in the same way that the managers of teams that built SSS's have.
Didn't we have these debates when DC United did this several years ago, when Adu was the hot new thing? They capped their stadium at something like 21,000 and people here went apeshit.