Well, that would explain that. I didn't know anything about the new stadium, where it was or anything. But apparently Tom Stone's 110-pound players didn't tear up Georgia Tech's football turf and tick GT's coach off this year, so all must be right in Atlanta.
(That grass wasn't as hurt as Jimbo was talking about ... ) Even if O'Leary and Stone had not had it out about the turf, the Beat would have found someplace else to play anyway -- Bobby Dodd's going through some pretty big renovations over the next year or two and would have needed to complete the different phases before the college football season started.
Soooooooo...they decided to put the championship game in this place, and charge $40 for most of the seats. Wow. If the Beat's not in it (or even if they are), I think they're going to struggle to sell tickets. They'd better hope for Atlanta and Washington to win Saturday so at least they can have the home team in it and The Mia Effect to help things along.
Thats all this league averaged. This league must be in danger of extinction with those numbers. They are sun wnba.
Actually I believed that WOOSA's target attendance for this year was right around 7000, but I could be wrong though.
Re: Re: Re: WUSA Attendance Thread You could very well be right. At least I got 3 of the numbers right
I thought they said 7500 for last year and made mention of the fact that they exceeded that. It would stand to reason that they would hope for an increase in Year 2, even though that's when you have to work harder sometimes to get the same results.
Thats good then that they almost hit their atendance mark. What i don't get is how that can be their goal and they can still survive while mls averages like 15k yet they supposedly lose lots of money. Does anyone know the economics of this?
Well, see, most people outside ATL are probably not aware of Morris Brown's repuation. They just know it's right down from the GA dome. If they get Beat and/or Mia in the finals, I'm sure attendance will get a boost, but MANY people have already bought theirs, knowing the small capacity of Morris Brown (compared to Foxboro last year).
I think part of it is the stadiums they play in, how much they pay for rent, etc. I mean, SAS Stadium in Cary, NC only seats a max. of 7,000. Atlanta's max is 16,000, but because of the neighborhood, I'm pretty certain they got a decent deal for it. But all in all, I think the WUSA has kept a better check on their expenses, at least this year. God only knows, last year they threw around money a little too optimistically. But they're learning. And they have to learn quick or they'll be gone in no time.
(a) WUSA doesn't spend as much on players and stadia; (b) WUSA has only, to this point, "survived" for two years. Big difference. If they don't make it to year four, there's your answer.
Re: Re: WUSA Attendance Thread In fact, the USSF is paying for the final two roster slots on each team this year. The roster sizes are dangerously (or desperately) small. On top of that, the salaries are much to crow about, either. Yep. That's the biggie. Unless the league is hemmoraghing money, it would be a public relations nightmare for the funders to not play next summer. I expect the league to survive until next fall's Womens World Cup. After that, all bets are off. Either the WWC will help draw enough new investors and advertisers, or the league will cease to exist in any meaningful shape or form. Of course, I seriously doubt the league will continue to exist in its current form. A more workable (financially speaking) arrangement would be to get WUSA teams into existing SSS with local ownership and control. I can't imagine that the Freedom make any money at all. 6,000 fans at RFK stadium can't possibly cover the rent. 5,000 fans at Blackbaud, however, would do quite nicely. Especially if the Battery ownership had a stake in the team.
From there, Hendricks: If they continue to have eight teams play 21 games each, that's a total of $7,245,000 in ticket revenue. For the league. Can you run a league on that? Even assuming you can find, let's say, an equal amount in sponsor money? Cash? $15 million to run 8 teams and a league office? In, say, 2005 dollars? If you're paying 18 players an average of $45,000 each, that's $810,000 per team. Maybe you can, but I'm thinking you'll be serving Ramen noodles a lot.
yuk. Well at least they got the matchup they want for the final Mia vs. Atlanta. Should be a good gate for this one.
I'll be the first to admit - we should have sold out the place. Shame on us. The &@^$~!'n X-Games are in town, and the Phillies and Cardinals were at the Vet in a totally meaningless series for the locals save for the return of Scott Rolen as a Cardinal. Both WERE significant factors in the attendance being as abysmal as it is, and I've tried not to excuse-a-rama something like our attendance. We keep moaning in this region that we've gone 19 years without a championship, the longest time a North American city of similar size has gone without one. Maybe we're not so bent out of shape about that as I thought we were. Today was just the 11th time in 21 years Philadelphia has hosted a championship qualification game in a major pro sport. If the fans had cared enough about that, then the Freedumbers who came up here would have been a lot less than 300 or so.
How long was it from the time you knew there was going to be a playoff game until the time the game was actually played? That's a significant factor as well. As is the fact that you can't put groups together for a playoff game, usually, as groups take a while to pull together, and the fact that, usually, you start from scratch without your season ticket base as most teams don't include the first playoff game in their season ticket package. Do you really think the people who would go to the X-Games or go to boo Scott Rolen are people who would be the target audience for the Charge? Or could the time/lack of groups/starting over have had as much to do with it? You only missed your season average by, what, 400 people? That's actually an amazing accomplishment, even moreso if, indeed, the Charge don't include a playoff game in their season ticket package. The playoffs at this level of sport simply aren't the draw in and of themselves that everyone seems to think they should be. They're a hard sell, you don't just open the doors and watch the people roll in.
X-Games, yes; Phillies, admittedly, no; their game started 15 minutes before the Charge teed it up. We don't include a playoff game in the season ticket package, we just get a letter asking us to buy the ticket before a certain date in July. We had only 4,000 or so sold as of Wednesday. Now it can be told, per the Philly Inquirer. Who's to blame for that, I guess, is the next question? A semifinal in any league should not be considered a baseball division series throwaway game like the Braves fans treat it Paul
One more thing... Carolina's SAS seats what, 7,500 or so? So they had a better attendance capacity percentage than we could muster today. Paul
Yet there are any number of leagues in which this is, sadly, the case, because the competition itself is not as important to the masses as it is to the hardcores.