Re: One more thing... Geez, how hard it is it to understand. Playoff games in WUSA and MLS have no chance to match regular season attendance. I was predicting 4k, and 5,500 showed up. Except for truly "Major Leagues", games that are Not On The Schedule have virtually no chance to draw a decent crowd. End of story. Discussion over.
Didn't WUSA average 13.5k last year during the playoffs? Overall - I was impressed with WUSA's selling capability this year. I know they are down 15% from last year but I thought it would be much worse. The fact the midweeks did not seriously hit attendance impressed me most. It seems that the core audience is showing up. Obviously the double headers skewed results - but they will continue to skew results and must simply be considered as much a part of WUSA attendance as MLS' 4th of July firework games. TV ratings for PAX have to be disappointing though however you look at them. Given how crappy PAX is - I seriously doubt that they have as large of an audience as they claim - so I think the number of viewers is even less than what's being provided by Nielsen's.
Maybe including the final. Fact is they hardly had any midweeks. 14 Wednesdays and a Thursday. Smaller sample in the WUSA. Only 84 games. An outlier can skew things a little bit more. But I agree their core is pretty solid---just don't know if the care is big enough to sustain them. They are fairly consistent league-wide. I have no way of knowing whether they're in as many homes as they say they are, and I don't think there's any way to know for sure, is there? I mean, I would think Nielsen knows for sure, in which case you'd think they'd call them on it. But maybe not.
The problem these days is that it is no longer sufficient for them to be in homes, but that the homes know that they're there. The large number of channels available in most homes leads most users to key in on a few main stations. There are few "global" surfers anymore. You could probably ask 100 folks who have PAX, and maybe half would have heard of it, but that's just my opinion.
Heck, even Villanova's NCAA Men's Basketball crown was within the last 19 years. It's amazing the blinders on some folks.
I suppose it's a good thing but there are more people at the ticket office just before the match this season than last at Villanova. Always more people there than last season.
Just an observation... At least the average attendances for each of the teams is fairly consistent. It isn't like one or two teams are getting high attendances while the rest of the teams are scraping by with low attendance numbers.
Contrary to KT's comment, it was too bad that the cameras mostly showed the east side because the west side stands were completely packed. More so as folks sought out the shade. It was f'ing hot out there in the sun and a lot of folks had been in the sun since 11 AM at the FanFest in Centennial Olympic Park.
Herndon is listed as having a seating capacity of 15,011 -- I'd probably say about 15, 600 with the additional stands they put up behind goal.
The place looked good on TV, though, and was described as very picturesque in one newspaper account. Is the neighborhood really that bad?
I hit the wrong side of herndon one night looking for media parking ... It made me nervous and I don't scare in 'bad' neighrborhoods. I think for the most part they really throw volunteers out in the open and there's tons of cops around before and after the games. once you go, you feel much better about it. On the other hand, since I have been behind Herndon (the way the stadium is situated is weird -- almost split level) and some of the roads back there, I can understand why people get that initial impression. I think the biggest problem lies in getting people there more so than keeping them.
The stadium was advertised as holding 16,500 with the stands added by the scoreboard. The AP reports claim that there were only 12,000 in attendance. While there was a large section in the middle of the second tier that was unoccupied, there is no way that there were 3,000 people missing. Also, as nsa said, shade and water were priority items for many. Plenty of helpful volunteers everywhere. Bonnie, you were missed.
I had some issues that came up right before the game -- as it was, I was waiting up until the last minute, and then that kind of clinched me not going. If it's on the west coast next year, I doubt I'll go unless the Beat are in the finals. If it's on the east coast again, I should be there.
It's not hard to believe that only 12-13k were in attendance. There were plenty of parts of the stadium that looked vacant - and if the seats were bleacher style - people tend to spread out and fill up space. Anyone know what kind of seats they use there? I wouldn't be surprised if many of the sponsors got free ticketst that they gave away. Wasn't that happening in the Time Warner markets with employees getting free tickets etc. Eitherway, they had a year to sell the place out and they didn't - reduced size and all. It's not a 15k average sport yet and expectations should be reduced. If WUSA can improve on this years numbers they might live to fight another day. If attendance continues to drop and the TV deal doesn't come through they will need another serious cash infusion from the cable moguls.
Nor was it ever expected to be a 15k average sport. The highest expectations I ever saw were half that: 7,500. And they're pretty close to that. I thought we just had another influx of cash from the cable moguls, within the past week. For another 5 years, if I'm not mistaken.
Yes they did. http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/sports/0802/23wusa.html But does this mean that this "five years" kicks in after the first original five years or does this "another five years" funding kick in now?
Actually, they had just over 4 1/2 months to sell the place out (Atlanta wasn't announced as the site until April 3), didn't have the home team in it, and still got almost twice the league average. I think they did fine.
ESPN Soccernet Article Actually, it says that it is an AP article. It is entitled "WUSA had big drop in attendance." http://espn.go.com/soccer/news/2002/0825/1422648.html