Quakes attendance: Obvious consipracy

Re: Coincidence?

* Onstad at GK (How could you forget this?)

 

I was surprised by the low figure too, but I think we are too used to exaggerated past claims from the Earthquakes/Clash and continuing exaggerations from other MLS teams. I agree that Colombus is the best example.

 

According to the Crew BS People (I.e. Village People), they had a lot of paid attendence that didn't show up (7,000 season ticket holders). Do they only go to games in the summer? In their last game against the Metros, there were nobody at the game (unless they are all wearing yellow which matches with the stands...Hmm...).

 

Don't forget the California Wimp Weather factor. I think that's part of the secret conspiracy. Government scientists are sending Seattle's weather down to us knowing that the average Californian won't tolerate sitting in Spartan Stadium for 2 hours under those conditions in a thinly-veiled attempt by the "move the Earthquakes to Seattle lobby" to wrest our club from under us.

Seriously though...the damage inflicted by "caretaker management" won't easily be repaired. All the wailing we do for "promotion" and "advertising" isn't the "magic bullet". Unfortunately, time is the only cure for these ills. The longer we stay in this market and at least keep the ability to tread water, the greater the probability those wounds will heal.

And didn't I read somewhere that the league has admitted they've inflicted such damage to this market that they "owe" us the opportunity to succeed here? I take that as a sign that we have time to work this situation through.

 

It's harder to judge attendance than before. The new pricing scheme has changed the seating patterns (less in the west, more on the east side).

 

That might be right. But the 9k number seems about right for the crowd we had.

 

Heretic! Burn him! EVERYONE knows that the crowd was at least 12K last week, and The Man is keeping is down by under-reporting attendance!

 

The Crew don't over-inflate their numbers. If they did then only 8k were at last Saturday's game against New Jersey, which was an announced 12k. Would any team who had their own SSS exaggerate a 12k figure?

 

The other day, I was watching the Quakes/LA game that I recorded off of Shootout. Since those telecasts are satellite feeds from the outlet channels in the visiting teams' city, I got to listen to the comments of the announcers when they were "off the air" during commercial breaks.

At the end, with the crowd singing and yelling and dispersing, you could plainly hear their play-by-play guy read the attendence figure and his quote:

"9,000.....it looked like more, didn't it? (to someone off camera)...I thought so too!"

Even LA agrees that we had more. I concur with those of you who think it was more like 12K. Someone in the ticket counting booth must have not carried a significant digit to the top of the thousands column!!!

 

I guessed 9 to 9.5. I think the problem is that we're still recovering from a bad, collective case of metaparel-itis and 10 looks like 20 to us!

 

Sorry but I think the 9000 figure was close. There were more people in the East stands so it looked like more. But there were fewer people on the West side than most games last year. Also there were no lines in the bathrooms, you but 10,000 in Sparten and you definately get bathroom lines.

 

You must have been on the west side. There were long lines to get into the bathrooms on the east side. The first time I've seen that happen, even when we had 26,000. The men's johns, not the women's.

 

I wasn't surprised a bit by the 9k figure. We sit in the southwest corner, and in previous years, there wasn't open seats between us and the center line.

That game, an entire section next to us was empty. I kept expecting Club Quake or hordes of kids soccer teams to come and fill it, but that never happened. Saw the same sort of thing across the field on the east side.

And my tickets went up this season. Annoying.

 

On Saturday, the three central sections on the east side were full, and the five central sections on the west side were all pretty full. Other than the Casbah and Riot Squad sections, the rest of the sections ranged from nearly empty to about 60% full. That is not a big crowd. No way is that 12,000.

One thing that made it look bigger than in the past was that section 130 was just as full as sections 131 and 129, due to all three of those sections being the same price now. In the past you would see 131 and 129 fill up with 130 being almost empty, since seats in 130 used to cost $10 more than seats just across the aisle. We aren't used to seeing 130 fill up except on big attendance days. Under the old pricing system a 9,000 crowd would have nearly filled the west side, while the east side would have had 129 and 131 75% full and the rest of the sections fairly sparse. The new scheme has moved a lot of the people from sections like 114 and 108 to the east side.

 

I remember thinking it looked like 8,000 plus, but i was on the east side looking at the west side so 9k sounds right.

 

<chuckles>The Man indeed! </chuckles> You know, the SFPD initially claimed that 60,000 people showed up for the (first) peace march in SF a weeks back. The orgtanizers claimed closer to 300,000. I stood on a street corner for about an hour and did flow estimate of the marchers as they walked by, and came up with something more like 170,000. My estimates tend to be a bit conservative, but not extremely so.

So. The PD would claim about 4500 people showed up last weekend. The organization should claim somthing like 22,000, and I'll stick with something closer to 9,000.

 

I'LL STICK WITH SOMETHING CLOSER TO 13G'S. IT WASN'T AS MUCH AS THE OPENER BUT,LET'S NOT OVER DOIT AND SAY 9,000. IF YOU'RE GOING TO LOWBALL THEN MAYBE 11 TO 12G'S.