As a season ticket holder for United from 96, i can tell you your analysis of DC is flawed. The base for United is way above 10k. Winning a few games at home will make a big difference as well as just playing better football. United doesn't need to be reinvented; it just needs a new stadium. I have no doubt that United would be one of the very biggest draws in the League with a new stadium and even a half decent team.
You think teams like New York, Vancouver, Toronto and Philadelphia have taken 3 steps forward this year attendance-wise, really? Call me an optimist, but even small steps add up over time; most of the "upper class" as you call it is near full capacity anyways, so in the future the source of growth (and thus average attendance) will be from teams like Colorado and Columbus.
I agree. People want easy answers, but the bottom seven teams Ole refers to have different challenges and that gets lost in the downtown stadium discussion. Yes, DC United needs a stadium. Any stadium not in Baltimore would help them IMO. Chivas and the Revs could use one too (although it's hard to see Kraft building one when he already owns one). The lack of a permanent home is hurting some teams, both because of the lost revenue and the dispiriting impact on their fan base. But marketing matters too. People ignore the fact that Colorado and Dallas have improved in attendance over there historical averages in their new stadiums. They didn't get more of a bump because (anecdotal evidence suggests) they weren't run particularly well and didn't put the resources into selling tickets they should have. They've corrected that, but it's a long way back. Still, Kansas City and Philly, one old, one new, stand for the proposition that a well marketed team in a new stadium -- even a stadium that isn't in the downtown core -- works. That's good news, because if you do believe that a downtown stadium is essential for a team to survive and thrive, teams like Chicago, Dallas, Colorado, Philly, Salt Lake, Kansas City, RBNY et. al. are doomed -- it will be years before they get another soccer specific stadium to replace the ones they have built.
Yeah, that's why I posted the different average growth values. Now, anyone who is really curious about a different forecast can just average the %diff values for the previous years and apply that to the current year's average and forecast a final value. In fact, I think people are already doing that in their heads. They look at the %diff column and think, "most of those are positive, why isn't the predicted change positive?" I was just trying to validate that inclination, I guess. Oh, and all edward would have to do is apply the formula: cell c18 = b18+b18*average(d2:d17) -- using the table and values he provided earlier in the thread. But, like I said, it isn't necessary.
Good to hear. I was just referring to the fact that at this point DC is down both from this time last year and their historical average.
I always like to chime in with a little anecdotal evidence for Chicago but.... Season ticket sales have improved significantly over the past 5 years. Something like a real base of 2000 to over 6000 now, with the last three years being on a steady and positive increase. It may take another three years but Chicago's on its way towards critical mass. The Quaker deal has probably stabilized a few things that were in flux the last two years. There have already been some investments in the stadium since they arrived and with two more years of stability and consistent marketing, season ticket sales should continue to climb. There's always a chance things could take a turn for the worse but right now things are steadily improving. We're not getting a new stadium bump again so it's good to see management working to fix the years of mismanagement leading up to and through the opening of Toyota Park. The soccer market in Chicago is huge, vibrant and intelligent. They've been somewhat ignored and in return they were gladly ignoring a mediocre Fire team for a couple of seasons. I wouldn't worry too much about Chicago's short term numbers.
I always find it funny when someone says that Red Bull Arena is located in the suburbs. That's technically true in relation to NYC's location, but it just sounds funny for the area. New York is really a city surrounded by cities. RBA is actually located right next to a city downtown, just not New York's, and the county it's located in, which is in NJ and not a part of NYC, has more people in it than Boston. LA is also a bad place to do work with a single core, thought the author notes that.
Actually with the downtime tonight I plan on reworking the predictive to see what 3, 5, and 10 year forecasts look like. I think the issue with the average differential is that it is most likely going to spit out a nice positive number at this point, but it to is dragged down by the early years. The formula is pretty easy to change, it is just hitting on the right time span for the forecast. Clearly the full life of MLS is to long. But if we can find projections that were relatively close to the actual change then that is what I will go with.
Cool. I suppose the best method to choose will depend on what the forecast is meant to show. If the forecast is meant to be a prediction of how much average attendance changes between April (or May or September etc.) and the end of the season, then I would advocate averaging the previous %diffs. If, on the other hand, the forecast is meant to reflect some functional relationship between current and end-of-season attendance values -- for example, that lower current attendance tends to have a higher percentage increase going into the end of the year than a relatively higher current attendance -- then the Excel forecast function is doing about as well as can be expected given the data. Personally, I vote for the former, for all that's worth.
Oh, and just a reminder, the 2007 observation is just as problematic as 96 and 97 for resulting in a negative forecast. You could probably kick it out as an outlier with the same justification.
That's not entirely true. You would be right if we ignore the reasons why those years were outliers, as is often done since the precise reasons for such things can be hard to come by. But at least for 1996, the reasons for the steady drop are extremely clear. It was the league's first year, and the first few weeks were highly attended as it was a fresh new thing. Then as the season wore on, it dropped as the newness factor wore out. Since such conditions can no longer ever be replicated within the context of the current MLS, it can readily be cut off. In fact, leaving it in causes a lot of overfitting, even if we were trying to find some relationship between current and end of season attendances. 1996 is so different, in fact, that you could think of it a separate data set that represents something completely different. For example, it could be used to model what happens to sports leagues that are just starting out. 1997 was similar, but it was far less extreme, as the league was no longer really in the 'completely new' stage. We could argue in favor of leaving out the first few years entirely as well. These aren't nearly as big outliers as 1996 is, though.
The biggest reinvention for SKC was the stadium and owners that are really caring about their investment . The whole stadium day out is not just about soccer game but a brand new adventure while inside the stadium. It seems that the current owner doesn't have the balls or the money to replicate as such like SKC.
I'm a huge KC fan, but it would take four or five times the money to pull off the same thing in DC. And nobody throws that much money down the rat hole. As a keen observer on the field, Will Chang is as involved, emotionally, with his team as much as anyone except maybe Robb Heineman. But DC is not KC. It's not as simple as finding real estate on the Beltway and plopping down a stadium. That works in Kansas City, because that's how Kansas City works as a municipality. The demographics and transportation systems in DC are a whole different world. Even as "easy" as it was in Kansas City, LSP is built on the third site the current owners started development on (and truth be known, HSG with the NSCAA had done preliminary work on a couple other sites). Getting something done correctly and profitably in the DC area is far more complex than it is in Kansas City.
I've always felt that the inability to get there by rail to be a problem. With all the rail lines by the stadium, has there been any effort to get some sort of day of game special line from a nearby metro station? I remember when I went to White Hart Lane in London there was a special spur line that ran closer to the stadium on game days only.
Right. I know the area around Toyota Park. That's why I asked. Of course the folks in a position to make it happen might have other vested interest. Like the fear of lost parking revenues, or the fear that a rail connection would allow more of the wrong sort of people (on game days, anyway) easy access to the area. The politics of money and politics of fear can be a tough duo to overcome.
Fire officials might look at the above post and take credit for finding out that the railroad tracks actually stops 10 feet away from the stadium.
Lol. Funny you should ask. I scouted out the locations and yes, there's a Metra line about a mile and a half North of the stadium. The tracks of that station connect to the tracks 10 feet West of the stadium lot (ten FEET) which is a stretch four tracks wide. There are two switches that between the station and the line of tracks next to the stadium and the tracks are owned by CSX. Permission would be needed from CSX to turn a Metra off of the Metra line and South to the stadium. We already know Metra will run a special day of game train because they did it for a year and a half while we were in Naperville. Parking a train next to the stadium shouldn't be a problem with four lines of tracks that never have more than two trains but even if that were considered too congested the train could back up 1.5 miles and wait and the station. All this information (and more) was brought directly to the mayor, stadium manager, village business office, Fire president and owner over a year ago. The timing was perfect because the village is working with CSX right now to build an underpass beneath those four lines of rail. CSX and Bridgeview have been in contact for several years on the project so the lines of communication are open to introduce the idea. All it would take is an entity that cares enough to do so. Unfortunately no one has been willing to do anything about it. I'd post the google map of the area but I'm on my phone. Take a look and you can see the thin grey lines that represent the rail. Google "Hanover park Summit il" or find it at Archer and 1st Ave. Follow the grey line from there to the stadium. It's a home run but as much improvement as we've seen the whole kit and caboodle is still basically run by Laurel and Hardy.
/Places hands over nether regions for protection as if in a group of teammates guarding roughly one half of a framed objective for an opposing team/ Ouch! Schedule gods did poorly on this one.
Tough game overall. A relative no name opponent, mid week during school year (The Revs still need the youth crowd), and a fairly cold night. Still that is no excuse for a 2001 type crowd but with only one sub 10k game this was bound to happen. I think others predicted this game would be sub 10k but I was hoping more in the 8500 range.
the revs never cease to amaze with their always increasing levels of attendance suckitude and irrelevance ... it is almost how impressive just how far the revs have fallen and just how much the league is loathe to do the right thing and force Kraft to sell the team out of some sort of misguided loyalty for what he "did" during the early days ... which if truth be told really wasn't that much compared to guys like Hunt and Anschutz
And not 'cause anyone asked, but just because.... I hate the new format like I hate a 2-1 result against Iran, or a flop by Claudio Reyna against Ghana or a short-post miss by Tim Howard in 2010. Just sayin' yo.
Are you aware of someone who wishes to purchase the team? Unless you want them to move the team, it is going to be pretty hard to sell this team and keep it local. I don't need to list the reasons as they should be obvious.