MLS Game Attendance Summary Leaked -- SD Union-Tribune

Economists are people who can tell you tomorrow exactly why what they predicted yesterday, did not occur today.

 

Yes people go to games. Yes, revenue changes hand.

But the problem is that MLS attendance figures have nothing at all to do with either.

 

Makes sense...

 

... Which takes us back to square 1. Most fans are realizing slowly but surely that MLS regular season games don't mean a whole lot b/c the playoff system doesn't really offer a big enough reward for obtaining a higher seed... Not to mention that 66% of the teams are currently making the post season, and their only concern really is finishing inside that 66% percent- Not at the top of it. To me, in a league where the average level of play improves somewhat every year, this explains the disparity between tickets "distributed" and the actual gate... A number that would appear to be increasing every year, which I'm basing on reported attendances vs apparent attendances.

How to solve it?

At the very least we need to switch to single game elimination playoffs so that higher seeds are justly rewarded with home field advantage in playoff matches. The problem with that? The playoffs will be over in 3 weeks... From 8, to 4 to 2. 3 games only to the title.

How do we solve this? By getting the number of playoff teams to 12 like the NFL has.

If MLS gets to 16 teams in the next few years as was an original goal you can conceivably have 12 of those 16 make the post season rather effectively actually, but only on one condition: If you award a separate League Championship for the first place finisher in the table, based on a balanced schedule, which represents half the League Honors, along with MLS Cup based on the playoffs being the other half.

Under normal conditions playing an entire season just to eliminate 4 teams is ridiculous, however if the desired goal of every MLS Club is to try and win both The League Championship AND MLS Cup then you can have a 12 of 16 Cup playoff, and the best thing about it is it keeps every part of the table competitive through the entire season, without promotion/relegation.

Here's how:

Once we near the half way point of the season and the table begins to take shape, your top 4 or 5 teams will be competing a) for the League Championship and b) for home field advantage in MLS Cup Playoffs.

Mid table teams will be trying to climb back into the championship, but at the very least they will be trying to earn a home game in the first round of MLS Cup playoffs to have a decent shot at MLS Cup.

Lower table teams will be fighting to make one of the last few spots of the Cup playoffs, to have an outside shot at winning MLS Cup, even though they will be out of contention for the League Championship by then.

Of course, the desire will be to sweep both MLS Honors, but winning 1 of 2 will still mean that for even an underachieving season the club still took home silverware.

Award 1 CONCACAF Champions spot to MLS League Champ.
Award 1 CONCACAF Champions spot to MLS Cup Champ.

Kickoff the following season with a Nationally-televised "MLS Kickoff Classic" between MLS League & MLS Cup Champions... Or if one club did the MLS Double and won both titles, then the Kickoff Classic will be between MLS Double Winners and the League Runner-up (2nd place finisher).

 

I'm guessing that if I had the report Ziegler has and a couple of hours to spend with SAS data mining software I could prove some pretty strong correlations between the two.

 

Using the new information provided in the online article, here are some fun numbers for people to get all hot and bothered about

This is 2005 data only.

Andy


Announced Attendance Per Game
1 Los Angeles Galaxy 24,329
2 Real Salt Lake 18,037
3 Chicago Fire 17,238
4 Chivas USA 17,080
5 D.C. United 16,664
6 MetroStars 15,077
7 Colorado Rapids 13,638
8 San Jose Earthquakes 13,037
9 Columbus Crew 12,916
10 New England Revolution 12,525
11 FC Dallas 11,189
12 Kansas City Wizards 9,691
LEAGUE 15,118

Paid Attendance Per Game
1 Los Angeles Galaxy 19,940
2 Real Salt Lake 12,689
3 Chivas USA 12,121
4 Chicago Fire 12,104
5 D.C. United 11,982
6 San Jose Earthquakes 10,134
7 MetroStars 9,956
8 New England Revolution 9,725
9 Columbus Crew 8,608
10 Colorado Rapids 8,058
11 Kansas City Wizards 7,004
12 FC Dallas 6,634
LEAGUE 10,746

Average Comps Per Game
1 Chivas USA 4,821
2 FC Dallas 3,864
3 MetroStars 3,776
4 Columbus Crew 3,735
5 Colorado Rapids 3,485
6 Los Angeles Galaxy 3,214
7 D.C. United 3,186
8 Real Salt Lake 3,009
9 Chicago Fire 2,523
10 San Jose Earthquakes 2,077
11 Kansas City Wizards 1,917
12 New England Revolution 1,472
LEAGUE 3,090

Total Tickets Distributed Per Game
1 Los Angeles Galaxy 23,155
2 Chivas USA 16,942
3 Real Salt Lake 15,697
4 D.C. United 15,169
5 Chicago Fire 14,628
6 MetroStars 13,732
7 Columbus Crew 12,342
8 San Jose Earthquakes 12,211
9 Colorado Rapids 11,543
10 New England Revolution 11,197
11 FC Dallas 10,498
12 Kansas City Wizards 8,921
LEAGUE 13,836

Percentage of Comp tickets distributed
1 FC Dallas 36.8%
2 Columbus Crew 30.3%
3 Colorado Rapids 30.2%
4 Chivas USA 28.5%
5 MetroStars 27.5%
6 Kansas City Wizards 21.5%
7 D.C. United 21.0%
8 Real Salt Lake 19.2%
9 Chicago Fire 17.2%
10 San Jose Earthquakes 17.0%
11 Los Angeles Galaxy 13.9%
12 New England Revolution 13.1%
LEAGUE 22.3%

Fudge Factor - Paid vs. Announced
Team Diff
1 Colorado Rapids 69.2%
2 FC Dallas 68.7%
3 MetroStars 51.4%
4 Columbus Crew 50.0%
5 Chicago Fire 42.4%
6 Real Salt Lake 42.1%
7 Chivas USA 40.9%
8 D.C. United 39.1%
9 Kansas City Wizards 38.4%
10 New England Revolution 28.8%
11 San Jose Earthquakes 28.6%
12 Los Angeles Galaxy 22.0%
LEAGUE 40.7%

Fudge Factor - Distributed vs. Announced
1 Colorado Rapids 18.1%
2 Chicago Fire 17.8%
3 Real Salt Lake 14.9%
4 New England Revolution 11.9%
5 D.C. United 9.9%
6 MetroStars 9.8%
7 Kansas City Wizards 8.6%
8 San Jose Earthquakes 6.8%
9 FC Dallas 6.6%
10 Los Angeles Galaxy 5.1%
11 Columbus Crew 4.7%
12 Chivas USA 0.8%
TOTALS: 9.3%

 

Do we really need this threadjack here? Can't you just cut and past this argument into the existing "meaningful game" threads?

Please?

 

Oh that was posed to me?

Honestly, I didn't have the numbers, but I already knew this has been going on for years. The degree of fudgery suprised me somewhat, but I had the general jist of what was going on.

This has nothing at all to do with me being a fan of MLS though. I love soccer, I love Red Bull, I love MLS and the number of people that attend matches has nothing at all to do with that.

So no, I am no less a fan today as I was yesterday.

 

Heck, try finding even weights for women soccer players in the U.S. They get published by FIFA at World Cup time, but I never saw them in the WUSA, and I've never seen them on any of the roster sheets handed out by the USSF.

But, yeah, it's sorta like the folks trying to "prove" Freddy Adu's age based on changes in his "official height" over the years.

 

Wow, cool numbers, there's lots of different ways you could look at those.
The first thing that pops out is that San Jose beat a number of teams, including the Metros, in actual paid attendance. (Of course, the average Metros ticket costs a lot more than the average Quakes ticket did, so the Quakes brought in a lot less ticket income than the Metros, but still...)

Looks like teams like Chicago, Colorado, and Salt Lake really made up a lot of their attendance numbers (total distributed vs announced), while teams like Columbus and Dallas were much more honest.

Interesting stuff.

 

Yes, but a sponsor isn't just getting the 7,000 people who paid, it's also getting the 4,000 who got in free.

In a sense, MLS is selling eyeballs. Sponsors don't care if they paid or not.

 

That was my first thought. I bet the ticket reps are hoping that very few of their season ticket holders didn't read this article.

Why buy the cow, etc....

Yeah, you want to support the cow so it gets healthier, but hey, it's not like I haven't done that already. If they are giving duckets away and I've been paying for years, I'm not suddenly feeling quite so altrusitc about supporting soccer.

That, and I just don't like being lied to. If they so blatantly lie about this, what does it say about their overall credibility? How do I know the lotteries aren't rigged? Because they say so? Well, they lie. How do I know the cap is real? Oh, right.

So, they lie about the cap and they lie about attendance. Why should I believe the whole product isn't rigged?

I don't actually think it is rigged, but when you lie like this so often and so easily, it damages your credibility and when you run a league where the public is supposed to trust your matches are on the up-and-up, that's not a good thing. This perception/reality thing cuts both ways.

 

Thanks for posting all those comparisons. Very useful way to break it all down. Lots of interesting ways to look at it all. Check this out:

Anyone else notice that the 4 teams that were in SSS's last year are the 4 teams that fudged their attendance numbers the least? I don't know exactly what that means, but I think it must mean something. Perhaps that teams with SSS's no longer feel the need to fudge numbers.


And I would like to point out to everybody that these are 2005 numbers. I'm sure 2006 numbers would be different, at least at the very top. LA's gigantic margin in paid and announced attendance would have shrikned considerably.

 

Right - and that's part of the equation that's still missing: actual ticket revenue.

Not to mention ancillary revenues the teams actually get to keep from concessions/parking/merchandise.

 

And interestingly, the next two teams on the list were the two teams that were for sale, and for which prospective buyers would want to see the "real" numbers.

 

That was my reaction too. I honestly thought this all really could have been worse.

That said, my guess is that the doubleheader attendance figures are mostly legit since there'd be little reason to hand out an inordinate amount of comps to them.

The key is going to continue to be getting more people to come out to games than currently are doing so. MLS has not done well in this regard so far as the official attendance numbers are concerned (the trend looks slightly down but only slightly), so we'll see.

 

Yeah, but we've all known for a long time that a lot of youth tickets are given away for free to youth leagues. Especially on those Youth Soccer nights that we see every now and then.

I'm not a youth and I have no access to free youth league tickets, so this really doesn't bother or apply to me. The only way I'm getting in is by paying, so I suspect I will continue to do so. I'm not going to worry that a bunch of kids are getting in for free.

And keep in mind that comps distributed definitely doesn't equal comps used. For example, the Crew gave out an average of 3,735 comps per game but that doesn't mean that many were used. In fact, it's a logical presumption to assume that people who pay for tickets are far more likely to use them than people who get tickets for free.

 

My guess is that it's the luxury boxes. MLS probably counts all of the luxury boxes as full, inflating attendance for the NFL stadium cities. On the other hand, it appears comps were more likely to be handed out at the SSS.

 

While staring at those various numbers, I was just thinking the same thing. Most of the numbers for doubleheaders last year are probably legit. Does anyone have a handy list of 2005 doubleheaders available? If so, we could subtract a few of those out and perhaps get an even more accurate view of what some of these teams were selling on an average basis.

 

Well, yeah, when it's your stadium, you keep the concessions and parking revenue so you use the WNBA model and do what you can do get butts in the building because even if they didn't pay for a ticket, once in they'll still pay for sodas, food, souveniers, and parking and the team keeps that.

THose revenues are why having your own barn is so important and once you have it, you want to get it so giving duckets away to get folks to spend money is actually smart business.

That's why I want my free share, now. I'll still spend money at the stadium, but why pay if others aren't having to do so?