What's attendance, 114?

ok, cool.... Ya feel like expanding on the topic?

 

I've seen nothing in the games I've seen over the years that would indicate to me that the "base" of support in Denver is shrinking.

 

Ok.. But you responded to my post where I was talking about New England, not Colorado.

 

Ah. Sorry, I misunderstood.

 

This has been interesting. Thanks for not getting defensive.

'Semantics' is 'meaning'. While you may not be into semantics, I very much am. That may be one of the differences in outlook between your observations and my comments.

One of the things I do when reading comments is to determine whether someone is just blowing off steam, or if someone is trying to make a point. I put you in the second category. I thought you were making a point that fan support was diminishing.

You made a point, Andy made a counter point. His evidence contradicted your point. You said (and I paraphrase) the small number of fans observable on TV at the CO game is an example of shrinking fan support in the MLS. Andy showed that an 8K attendence figure in a first round playoff game has not been unusual for MLS, and does not show shrinking fan support, at least not by your given example.

My mistake may have been my assumption that you wanted to make a point backed up with facts. You may have been just venting frustration. That's fine, too.

 

A little more than blowing off steam, but I can see why you say that. Just out of curiosity, what would be acceptable evidence as proof of a shrinking base of hard core fans? You and Andy are right, the Colorado game is really immaterial to the point.

 

That's a very good question, and it gets to what Andy was asking about when he asked for metrics.

Even in social sciences, metrics of various kinds are often used to help compare apples to apples, extract out biases, and reduce the effects of anecdotal evidence.

In this case, one metric is attendence, but it is fair to point out that all attendence is not equal. For example, MLS has held several double-headers in its history where the other game was the greater draw. This is not a criticism; in fact, I believe that it is a good marketing tool. But it is also fair to say that the fans at those games are not likely to be as committed as a Wednesday night MLS-only game fan.

Polling is another good method for determining how people feel. But I don't mean self-selected polling like internet polls. Unfortunately for most of us, it takes time and/or money to perform comprehensive polls with accurate sampling (often called 'scientific' polling, but I often refer to them as 'valid' polls as opposed to all other polls, which are 'invalid' in my opinion.)

Another method you can use is monitoring. BS is great for that, because there is a history of posts that over time build up a database of fan opinion. This is akin to reading letters to help write a history. Sure, the posters on BS are self-selected, but then so are history's letter writers. And there's less chance that the self-selection going on over time is intended to make a point (like internet poll stuffing.)

Another good metric could be in merchandise sold (tickets, t-shirts, big foam fingers, etc.)

Another good one is television ratings.

Check out www.kenn.com (Kenn Tomasch's site tracking attendence and TV ratings, and not just for soccer) to see a good sample of those metrics. He does a good job of explaining unusual attendences (like CO's July 4th numbers,) and he breaks it down by weekday, which is cool.

It also helps to remember that winning teams generally get improving fan support, while losing teams generally lose fan support. Whenever you are looking at a league, you must take that into account. New things tend to have a burst of fan interest (first year of MLS, new stadiums, Freddy's first game in your town) then support settles down after that.

It would be fair, however, to take what you read on BS to get ideas for the types of things to look for in terms of fan support. You could find out the sizes of the organized supporters groups, and how those groups' membership has changed throughout MLS's short history. If you see a lot of folks turning off of MLS, you could ask why, then see if others feel the same way. I saw a lot of discontent on BS when MLS contracted the two Florida teams.

I hope this gives you some ideas. It's always fun to take on little projects and see where they lead. This is a good skill to have in school, if you plan on getting (another?) degree.

 

Evidence that the league must end before the baseball championships because American soccer fans are probably baseball fans too.

 

I already have two degrees, thats plenty . Nice post, and if I had to prove my point in a court of law, I would use your methods. I would use most of them anyway. In the end though, none of your suggestions could uncategorically prove my case. Lets look at a couple. Attendance figures are just a tickets sold figure, unfortunetly, that doesn't help me at all. According to New England fans you cant even buy a Revolution jersey. Jerseys could potentially be an integral seller of a teams merchandise, no? Although, I dont have any merchandise stats in front of me to prove this either. Perhaps then, New Englands base is just fine. Revoltion fans posting here could just be out of their minds. Dallas support for its team might be vibrant too. When I tune in to pictures of an empty cotton bowl, the fans are could actually all sitting on the camera side or up gettin their beer and hot dogs. And so on and so forth. In conclusion, you are correct, I dont have cold hard facts, just observations. You dont have any to facts to the contrary, becuase hard facts like these dont exist. Its like a discussion global warming, some say its happening, some say its not and there is circustancial evidence to prove and disprove either. In these cases, I guess you have to weigh the evidence and decide for yourself.

 

More stats

Let's not forget though that 2 of the 4 playoff hosts this weekend (Colorado and New England) posted 10+% declines in attendance from 2003 to 2004.

So even if there was a "Playoffs, baby! Whoooo!" spike, you're still running into a general decline in interest and attendance.

I'd say the poor attendances are more a reflection of Colorado and New England (with NE having an additional handicap with the Sawx being in the Series) than MLS.

 

Well, MLS Cup looks like it'll sell out. Best seats right now for pairs are in the upper deck.


Only single seats in the lower bowl.

 

I need to break this down to respond.

More than me. I just assumed you were a college student because your rhetoric reminds me of many late night discussions I had back then.

In short, you would use scientific methods when making point. (In court + out of court = all the time)

I haven't talked about proofs, yet. However, using methods like these help establish fact, which can be useful in any type of proof.

Why not? I think tickets sold is a good barometer of fan interest. There are flaws, sure, but flaws do not make the metric useless. You just need to account for the flaws (like corporate buys, giveaways, doulbe-headers and the like.)

I don't know how good merchandise sales is for determining fan support. It was just an idea I threw out there.

That goes without saying.

That may be true, but it's not impossible to count them. Just expensive.

Observation is the first step. Hard facts do exist, and two of them, tickets sold and TV viewership, have been collected for the life of MLS and posted on-line for review. These two facts may help prove or disprove your point. I actually have not taken a position on either side of this.

Actually, that's how this whole discussion got started. You saw a small attendence on TV and said it was an example of diminishing fan support. Andy Mead looked up historic MLS playoff attendence and showed that, even if bad, it was not shrinking. When you discounted Andy's point saying you can't always measure using stats, that's when I jumped in.

But your point here is invalid. Global warming is known to be happening. There are no serious arguments that it is not. The disagreement you may be refering to is the cause of global warming (humans or natural,) and to a lesser extent, the rate of global warming. And even with these two categories, there is more than circumstantial evidence. There is hard evidence. Temperature readings over time. Sea levels. Chemical makeup of geologic strata, etc.

So far, I think you have tried to make the point that MLS is losing fans. If this is wrong, please feel free to correct me.

However, when trying to show that the number of MLS fans is decreasing, ticket sales and TV viewership figures can prove or disprove your point.

Not everything is subject to proofs (Is it beautiful? Does she love me? Is there a God?) But with a well defined statement, you can often use reason to justify conclusions.

 

I admire your tenacity Mountainia..... There is too much to go round and round with, but in regard to one of your bullets. I was simply trying to say I noticed that there seems to be a drop in several teams "hardcore fan" bases. Attendance figures measure how many tickets are sold and given away for a particular game. We don't know how many people are actually in the stadiums, they dont release those numbers. Then, who is in the stadiums? Is it the soccer mom out with her kid? Is it the youth team and their coach? Or is it the soccer fan thats there to support the team? Being that I am only discussing the latter group, these figures dont do me much good.

 

Well see, the Red Sox won the World Series. Does anything else matter?

 

If you have that same playoff game at NE. Except the RedSox's were already elminated from the post-season, and the MLS game had the same amount of marketing and hype about it; I'd say there would only have been 2-3k more people there max.

 

the stadium would be packed if in Houston!

Houston 2k5!