7,410 in San Jose. ESPN2 Soccer Saturday recent games in San Jose 5/31/03 vs. Chicago (7,410) 8/17/02 vs. DC United (11,177) 5/04/02 vs. Columbus (6,317) 4/06/02 vs. New England (10,104) 7/14/01 vs. Tampa Bay (7,065) There was also a 1pm local kickoff on Telemundo in 2001 that drew 6,879. I'm thinking best leave San Jose out of the rotation for ESPN2.
Did the 4pm ET starts somewhere a few weeks ago, but I don't know where it is now. 4pm local starts do okay, but as you go West, it gets pretty bad.
No. We don't expect 20k, but we also expect more than 7k. Seriously. I would hope that we've reached the point than any weekend game in MLS below 10k is a disappointment.
Already? Here are the average crowds for each team in nationally-televised (ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, Telemundo) afternoon Saturdays from 2001-2002: Team..........G...Total...Average Columbus......3...66,054...22,018 MetroStars....5..100,986...20,197 New England...3...49,322...16,441 Los Angeles...4...63,642...15,911 DC United.....3...43,361...14,454 Dallas........5...58,100...11,620 Chicago.......4...44,796...11,199 Tampa Bay.....2...20,534...10,267 Kansas City...3...29,180....9,727 Colorado......4...38,876....9,719 San Jose......5...41,542....8,308 Miami.........2...15,373....7,687 TOTAL........43..571,766...13,297 I haven't done the whole afternoon/evening thing for the whole league since 1996 because I don't know all the kickoff times. I have all the schedules, but there were games that were moved, and I haven't taken the time to sit down and figure it all out.
      7,410 my ass! There were a lot more people there than that!       It seems that the announced Spartan Stadium attendance numbers this season have been lower than the actual attendance numbers - it could be the Reverse Meterparel Syndrome (RMS) that we've kept hearing about lately. -G
New trend: under-reporting attendance. Seattle apparently did it Wednesday against San Jose. Maybe that's where the Quakes got the idea.
Well, the Burn seem to be overreporting attendance by 2,000 or 3,000 every game so things even out somewhat I guess. Of course, what might be happening at Dragon Stadium is that Kohl's and some of the other sponsors have received large blocks of tickets as part of their sponsorship deals and they can't find anyone interested in getting a complimentary ticket to a Burn game. But just as likely might be that the Burn are overcounting attendance to save face. At the Cotton Bowl, 13,000 to 15,000 actual bodies were in attendance at Burn games. At Southlake, they've been announcing crowds of 8,000+, but only 5,000 to 6,000 people actually bother to show up for the games.
What is that, a 10,080 average for the three games involving teams that have actually won a game this season?
This year is sucking. Man, I thought numbers would be down, but this isn't good. Let's hope with school being out, things get better. Or something.
I'm tired and may have screwed them up, so I'll run the numbers again sometime in the next day or so, but this might have been the worst average attendance month in MLS history -- 11,614? August 1999 was the previous low (11,923). Again, don't quote me on that. That was a quick figuring.
Looking at some of these figures, I wonder if our supposed "World Cup Bounce" last year took place before the Cup. Sachin